Loading linux....................

[hetman]

hi there, it used to run, once it froze, now i get this:
loading linux.....(20 x ".") and no more mandrake 8.1
any help?

[nycon]

hetman6,
We're going to need more information than that.
What are your system specs? What where you doing when your system froze etc.

Nycon

[mdwatts]

What did you do now? ;)

Seriously... Please provide a bit more info as that's not much to go on. Did you make any changes prior to shutting down the last time?

[Sawdusty]

I won't ask for more information too so, here's some blind help (hopefully it's help):

Did you try a boot disk? Or maybe a rescue disk? You could also try booting from the cd, if Mandrake supports that (I've never used it, but I'd expect it does). If you can boot, you'll at least be able to get in and look around. check the logs and such...

Dusty

[hetman]

sorry guys,
ok, its a mandrake 8.1 distro.
i have one of those removable hd bays, i was screwing around with it, i unmounted extra partitions /mnt/drive_backup <-- thats the drive
its /dev/hdc1
and then after i put it in again (dont worry it comes with a key so it shuts off the power being supplied and all that) and i tried to remount it. thats when it froze.
the drive works fine, under windows, all the info is there, the partitions for linux are fine (partition magic 7 didnt *****) and lilo seems to work as it loads up. right after lilo it goes to the
loading linux....................
and thats where it says, numlock works so its not a hard freeze, i can still ctrl alt del to reboot.
damn, i knew it wouldnt work, its not a hot swap drive bay, but i was curious. lol.

[hetman]

yeah, i used the cd to "rescue" and basically i backed up my files.
i dont know whats going on with this one.
i think maybe a file is corrupt, vmlinuz or something else, b/c it seems to freeze up, usually you get a ...ok but this one just stays there.

[mdwatts]

Knowing what happened certainly makes a difference though I don't really have a answer.

What Linux filesystems are on that drive? All of them?

Can you boot from the cd and then get into the filesystems to have a look around?

[hetman]

yeah, i can look around the partitions are all fine.
heres the breakdown
hdc1 = /mnt/drive_backup
hda2 = / <--linux
hda5 = swap

[mdwatts]

So there is nothing critical on that drive (hdc1) and only has backup data. That really shouldn't affect the operation of your system.

Try commenting out the line for /dev/hdc1 in /etc/fstab and see if Linux boots normally. If not, then also have a look at /etc/mtab to see if /dev/hdc1 is still there. Remove if it is. mtab is maintained by the system and usually you do not touch that file, but /dev/hdc1 could still be in mtab since you removed the drive while the system was still up. I know you unmounted before removing the drive, but you never know.

If it still won't boot, then I would suspect something was corrupted in your root filesystem (hda2).

[hetman]

hey thanks for all your help guys. i tried it all but nothing seems to work. so i used the rescue mode on the cd, backed up all my important stuff and did the old reinstall. i hate doing that, you never actually succeed in solving the problem, but at least i've got my linux back.
:)

[ 17 February 2002: Message edited by: hetman ]