[plug] problem booting

[Cameron Patrick]

David & Lisa Buddrige wrote:

| init-2.05b# ls /etc
| ls: /etc: Input/output error

Ouch.  That's bad. :(  Perhaps you could try fsck'ing your partition.
(After you've backed up anything important!)

| Perhaps I'll just try and get off some critical files incase I need to do
| drastic surgery....

Good idea...  Incidentally, this is why having a separate partition for
/home can be handy.

| So I think to myself... ugh... not good.... where's my devices gone?   Is
| this a Mandrake thing?  In RH /dev/fd0 was always the floppy but there does
| not seem to be such a thing in my /dev

Mandrake uses devfs, so you'll need to start devfsd before you can see
your "normal" device names.  That's not likely to work if you don't have
/etc.  Alternatives include booking with "devfs=nomount" or using
/dev/floppy/floppy0  (I think... the machine I'm sending this message
from uses devfs but has no floppy drive so I can't confirm this.  It'd
be consistent with the other devfs names I see though.)  You might also
find that the floppy driver isn't built into the kernel and needs to be
loaded with "modprobe floppy".

Cameron.