Hi all, This is just a small procedure I carried out last night. I started my machine and it gave "permission denied" error while creating /etc/mtab. So as mountd tried to mount partitions listed in /etc/fstab one by one, it would fail for all of them one by one. In the end I could only have a basic rootfs filesystem and could access none of my partitions, could not login as myself or as root and N other problems. I booted my machine through 8.0 install CD and could do a cat /etc/fstab to see the devices. As mtab is in /etc/ which is in turn in the same partition as /, so I did a reiserfsck /dev/hda3 Then it asked me to repeat itself with --fix-fixable This showed error as the name mtab being associated with an invalid inode. Voila ! This was my problematic file!! This was a filesystem error here. --fix-fixable did not help much as it still left one error behind - a fatal error. So I had to do an reiserfsck -h and read the output. This seemed to recommend doing a reiserfsck --rebuild-tree /dev/hda3 which I did. All these operations were carried out, of course, after booting from the startup-CD. After some output, the problem was apparently fixed. I rebooted and I was back in business. I lose my /etc/issue, and /etc/passwd file but this was a small loss - because I could see the backup copies of the same also. I have not found any other problems so far. So in summary - this was a filesystem corruption with RFS which was fixed using rfstools package on the boot-CD. Because the file in question was mtab, there were percolating errors later. Had it been corruption in /tmp, I probably would never have known. I encountered a problem, solved it, and shared what I did. I hope it saves panic to someone someday. -- Rohit +9122 5692 2101 D2,floor-3,Chandivali : SDE : TLSI : 9821394599@bplmobile.com The information below is compulsorily added for non-mahindrabt recepients. ********************************************************* Disclaimer This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. ********************************************************* Visit us at http://www.mahindrabt.com