Hi,
I'm pretty new at linux-stuff, but I have to install Debian for a school-project. Problem is, after installing, configuring some stuff like xwindows, sendmail, /etc/fstab, hosts.allow\deny, /etc/services.. I get a serious error. For some reason, the comp boots up and mounts root (/dev/hda1) as a read-only filesystem.
This means I can't do anything.
I have tried booting in single-user mode, booting from rescue and boot-disks. It always boots in this annoying read-only-mode.
I changed the line in /etc/fstab /dev/hda1 - it had option error=remount-ro.. so I changed that to remount-rw.. it still boots in read-only mode..
Anyone got any clues?
Please. Thanx for any suggestions.
Dar

Hi,

There is something I don't understand in your speech. How could you change your /etc/fstab if your filesystem is REALLY read-only ?
My guess is that it shows "Remounting root filesystem read-only" at boot time, but that's as far as it goes. Your FS is mounted RW afterwards.

I can see no reason for that to happen otherwise.
Best of luck !
Romain

Hi,
thanx for responding.
I think I was unclear in my description.
After the first read-only-thing happened, I re-installed Debian from scratch.
And to avoid the read-only mounting on errors, I changed the ro option in /etc/fstab to rw. But after the first reboot of the comp, it came up as read-only again. And I'm not allowed to change the /etc/fstab or anything else.
I can't start xwindows cause the comp can't create some authority-files (due to read-only) and I can't even use the man-pages cause the system can't create temp-files.

Someone suggested the harddisk might be damaged. But I don't know how to check that.
Any more suggestions?
Dar