Re: [cobalt-users] Re: cobalt-users digest, Vol 1 #6525 - 4

[Dan Houghton <lists@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 23:14 27/11/2003, you wrote:
> I tried putting the drive into another Linux system, but I couldn't figure 
> out how to mount it.
> I was using a Redhat 7.1 system,
> I'll try again on a Redhat 9 system and hope that works.
>
> Can anyone tell me how I'd go about mounting the Cobalt drive? What commands?
>
> Thanks.
> -Sergio

-snip-

Posting already out of sync now. Sorry archive people.

It's been a while since I did this and I really should have doc'd it in the 
process.

Connect the Cobalt disk onto the secondary IDE connection with the drive 
set to slave. Boot the Linux box. Once you're logged in as root type:

fdisk -l

(For further fdisk commands "man fdisk").

Here's an example from a raq4 -

[root /root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 58168 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             1      1524    768095+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2          1525      1846    162288    5  Extended
/dev/hda3          1847      2253    205128   83  Linux
/dev/hda4          2254     58168  28181160   83  Linux
/dev/hda5          1525      1585     30743+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6          1586      1846    131543+  82  Linux swap

A short listing of possible drives could include:
hda -- the master drive on the first IDE interface (that's always the first 
hard drive)
hdb -- the slave drive on the first IDE interface (you must have at least 
two hard drives for that)

So if I had a second drive then I would expect to see listings for 
/dev/hdb1 etc as well.

Assuming the second drive is hdb then:

mount /dev/hdb3 /mnt/

(I guess at hdb3 because on my raq 4 I have -
[root /root]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1             726M  590M  136M  82% /
/dev/hda3             194M   34M  160M  18% /var
/dev/hda4              26G  6.6G   19G  26% /home)

Hopefully you can then cd /mnt and see the Cobalt directory for /var.

For some tips see -

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/1/2003/07/3/73826
http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/lnag_drives.html

Remember to cd out of /mnt afterwards then use the umount command.

At a guess you probably have full log files in /var so I tend to blat the 
logs using "cat /dev/null > [log file name]". This will leave you with an 
empty file but retaining the correct permissions. Only do this if you're 
happy to lose the logs though.

If you manage to find your way through this using the above and other 
online help then probably useful for you to post back onto the list so it's 
there in the archives 8-)

        Dan




> On Nov 27, 2003, at 1:18 PM, Dan Houghton wrote:
>
> > Missing /var directory or full /var directory is a common cause for login 
> > problems. You can avoid having to OS restore though. You need to take out 
> > the Cobalt hard-disk and mount it in another generic Linux system (e.g. a 
> > box with standard Red Hat linux and the appropriate IDE cables). Mount 
> > the Cobalt disk then either clear out the /var directory (if it's full) 
> > or create a new /var directory structure with correct directory/file 
> > permissions (if it's missing).
> >
> > Then put the Cobalt disk back into the Cobalt server and you should get 
> > access again.
> >
> > While the Cobalt disk is mounted in another Linux server you can also 
> > manually edit the password file to paste in a new encrypted password that 
> > you've generated somewhere else. I would advise staying away from doing 
> > this if you're not comfortable with editing password files though.
> >
> >         Dan
>
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