I recently encountered a situation where I had improperly uninstalled some software and left an unused logical volume entry in fstab (last line in the table). I had removed the /dev entry for it manually, not knowing there was a utility provided by this 3rd party software that would have cleanly removed it. I couldn't find any information about utilities for maintaining fstab, so I held my breath, pulled the file up under Kate, and deleted that last line. I was then able to successfully re-install this 3rd party software and my system seems to still be perfectly ok. The re-install of the software put the entry back in the file, created the /dev entry under it, etc. My question is, are there any programs that allow you to manage fstab (check entries to see if they are childless, delete entries, etc.)? Greg Wallace
On Saturday 25 June 2005 10:20, Greg Wallace wrote:
I recently encountered a situation where I had improperly uninstalled some software and left an unused logical volume entry in fstab (last line in the table). I had removed the /dev entry for it manually, not knowing there was a utility provided by this 3rd party software that would have cleanly removed it. I couldn't find any information about utilities for maintaining fstab, so I held my breath, pulled the file up under Kate, and deleted that last line. I was then able to successfully re-install this 3rd party software and my system seems to still be perfectly ok. The re-install of the software put the entry back in the file, created the /dev entry under it, etc. My question is, are there any programs that allow you to manage fstab (check entries to see if they are childless, delete entries, etc.)?
What does "childless" mean? fstab is a text file, and it can be manipulated with a text editor, as you noticed. I usually just edit it with vim In YaST you have the partitioner tool, which effectively is an fstab editor
On Saturday 25 June 2005 10:20, Greg Wallace wrote:
I recently encountered a situation where I had improperly uninstalled some software and left an unused logical volume entry in fstab (last line in
On Saturday, June 25, 2005 @ 2005 10:54 AM, Anders Johansson wrote: the
table). I had removed the /dev entry for it manually, not knowing there was a utility provided by this 3rd party software that would have cleanly removed it. I couldn't find any information about utilities for maintaining fstab, so I held my breath, pulled the file up under Kate, and deleted that last line. I was then able to successfully re-install this 3rd party software and my system seems to still be perfectly ok. The re-install of the software put the entry back in the file, created the /dev entry under it, etc. My question is, are there any programs that allow you to manage fstab (check entries to see if they are childless, delete entries, etc.)?
What does "childless" mean?
fstab is a text file, and it can be manipulated with a text editor, as you noticed. I usually just edit it with vim
In YaST you have the partitioner tool, which effectively is an fstab editor
Thanks for the info. I went into partitioner in YAST and this entry did not show up. The only place that partition was referenced was in fstab. There was entry in /dev for the partition at one time, but I had manually deleted it a day or two before (don't ask me why). What would happen if I were to delete an entry out of fstab for, say, my root partition. My system would not even boot at that point, isn't that right? This is a pretty critical table for SuSE Linux (maybe any Linux), isn't it (or not)? Is there a particular format for the entries in the table, or could they just be delimited by a single space and it still work? Looks like right now they are tab delimited. Greg Wallace
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
Thanks for the info. I went into partitioner in YAST and this entry did not show up. The only place that partition was referenced was in fstab. There was entry in /dev for the partition at one time, but I had manually deleted it a day or two before (don't ask me why). What would happen if I were to delete an entry out of fstab for, say, my root partition. My system would not even boot at that point, isn't that right?
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that? If you delete the entry from fstab, the system would still boot. The root device is only partially set in fstab, the crucial place where the root device is set is the kernel parameter root= which you can find in your boot loader configuration, probably /boot/grub/menu.lst But that doesn't mean it's a particularly good idea All other partitions other than root would fail to get mounted automatically on boot if you delete the entry from fstab
This is a pretty critical table for SuSE Linux (maybe any Linux), isn't it (or not)?
Yes, for all unix versions (although the name varies. e.g. in Solaris it's called vfstab)
Is there a particular format for the entries in the table, or could they just be delimited by a single space and it still work? Looks like right now they are tab delimited.
The fields are "white space" delimited, which means they can have any number of tabs and spaces between them (well, there may be a limit, but it's not something you'd run into if you keep it sane) Yes there is a format. It is described in the man page for fstab
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that?
I can give you a reason. That is during an install SuSE spots a swap space on a USB HD it will try to use it. Look in /etc/fstab to prove it. If you disconnect/remove the device - at the next boot time you will get an error - a red "Fail". -- 73 de Donn Washburn Hpage: " http://www.hal-pc.org/~n5xwb " Ham Callsign N5XWB Email: " n5xwb@hal-pc.org " 307 Savoy St. HAMs: " n5xwb@arrl.net " Sugar Land, TX 77478 BMW MOA #: 4146 - Ambassador LL# 1.281.242.3256 " http://counter.li.org " #279316
On Sunday 26 June 2005 03:37, Donn Washburn wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that?
I can give you a reason. That is during an install SuSE spots a swap space on a USB HD it will try to use it. Look in /etc/fstab to prove it. If you disconnect/remove the device - at the next boot time you will get an error - a red "Fail".
Not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that if you delete the device node from /dev you won't get an error? I beg to differ Besides, failing to activate a swap device is not a fatal error, the system will still boot and run (unless it's the only available swap device and you have way to little real memory) The installer won't activate any swap devices automatically. In the partitioning setup it may set all partitions with ID = swap to be used as swap, but you always have the chance to override it, without any need to physically delete the device node And with the hal/udev hotplugging setup I don't think it even matters if you delete it, as I think it will be recreated automatically. Not sure about that though, I haven't fully explored all the features of the new stuff
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 03:37, Donn Washburn wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that?
I can give you a reason. That is during an install SuSE spots a swap space on a USB HD it will try to use it. Look in /etc/fstab to prove it. If you disconnect/remove the device - at the next boot time you will get an error - a red "Fail".
Not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that if you delete the device node from /dev you won't get an error? I beg to differ
Not a /dev/file but a /etc/fstab entry The above statement comes from my having a USB HD with a small 400M swap partition (known as type 82). SuSE spotted the swap space and put that information in /etc/fstab. At boot time the USB device is not always seen by the system which is a problem for "mount" when the fstab listed device is not available. -- 73 de Donn Washburn Hpage: " http://www.hal-pc.org/~n5xwb " Ham Callsign N5XWB Email: " n5xwb@hal-pc.org " 307 Savoy St. HAMs: " n5xwb@arrl.net " Sugar Land, TX 77478 BMW MOA #: 4146 - Ambassador LL# 1.281.242.3256 " http://counter.li.org " #279316
On Sunday 26 June 2005 04:11, Donn Washburn wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 03:37, Donn Washburn wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that?
I can give you a reason. That is during an install SuSE spots a swap space on a USB HD it will try to use it. Look in /etc/fstab to prove it. If you disconnect/remove the device - at the next boot time you will get an error - a red "Fail".
Not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that if you delete the device node from /dev you won't get an error? I beg to differ
Not a /dev/file but a /etc/fstab entry
In other words you didn't read what you replied to. Let me quote it for you again.
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that?
To which you replied
I can give you a reason.
But since you were talking about something completely different, you didn't. There are reasons why you at times would want to delete items from fstab, yes
On Saturday, June 25, 2005 @ 5:10 PM Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
Thanks for the info. I went into partitioner in YAST and this entry did not show up. The only place that partition was referenced was in fstab. There was entry in /dev for the partition at one time, but I had manually deleted it a day or two before (don't ask me why). What would happen if I were to delete an entry out of fstab for, say, my root partition. My system would not even boot at that point, isn't that right?
If you delete the file from /dev it wouldn't. But why would you do that?
Ok. Here's a quick explanation of what got me into this. I uninstalled this 3rd party software and tried to do a clean re-install. This software didn't clean up after itself properly and left the logical volume entry in /dev. At that time, I didn't know that it had a built-in utility that would clean that out, so, in order to get that entry out of dev, I simply deleted it. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), I could have gone to partitioner and it would have shown up there, at which point I could have deleted it with the partitioner and it would have both removed the /dev entry and cleaned up fstab. Anyway, since I didn't do it that way, I was stuck with cleaning up fstab, which is what I ended up doing.
If you delete the entry from fstab, the system would still boot. The root device is only partially set in fstab, the crucial place where the root device is set is the kernel parameter root= which you can find in your boot
loader configuration, probably /boot/grub/menu.lst
But that doesn't mean it's a particularly good idea
All other partitions other than root would fail to get mounted automatically on boot if you delete the entry from fstab
Got it! Ok, this is something for my Linux reference file.
This is a pretty critical table for SuSE Linux (maybe any Linux), isn't it (or not)?
Yes, for all unix versions (although the name varies. e.g. in Solaris it's called vfstab)
Is there a particular format for the entries in the table, or could they just be delimited by a single space and it still work? Looks like right now they are tab delimited.
The fields are "white space" delimited, which means they can have any number of tabs and spaces between them (well, there may be a limit, but it's not something you'd run into if you keep it sane)
Yes there is a format. It is described in the man page for fstab
I didn't see it in there, but I was scanning for different types of info. I'll go back and look at it in more detail Thanks, Greg Wallace
On Sunday 26 June 2005 02:56, Greg Wallace wrote:
What does "childless" mean? <snip> Thanks for the info. I went into partitioner in YAST and this entry did not show up. The only place that partition was referenced was in fstab. There was entry in /dev for the partition at one time, but I had manually deleted it a day or two before (don't ask me why). What would happen if I were to delete an entry out of fstab for, say, my root partition. My system would not even boot at that point, isn't that right? This is a
On Saturday, June 25, 2005 @ 2005 10:54 AM, Anders Johansson wrote: pretty critical table for SuSE Linux (maybe any Linux), isn't it (or not)? Is there a particular format for the entries in the table, or could they just be delimited by a single space and it still work? Looks like right now they are tab delimited.
By the way, I'm still wondering what a "childless" partition is
participants (3)
-
Anders Johansson -
Donn Washburn -
Greg Wallace