DISK CRASH! (quick boot info)

[John B. Milton]

In article <8904181249.AA22934 at zorch.UU.NET> scott at zorch.UU.NET (Scott Hazen Mueller) writes: (for David Melman)
...
>The problem:  DISK CRASH!
>
>The system is Unix-PC, Sys V 3.51, with a former 70 meg disk.
>It will not boot off the hard disk, but will boot off the floppy.
>The injured disk can be mounted, and some files can be read.
>
>The question:
>
>How can the system allow the removal of the boot floppy (and stay up)
>so the readable files off the hard disk can be backed up to the floppy
>drive?
>
>Please E-mail directly to me as I'm not a member of this list.

Well, looks like you've got quite a problem. My suggestion would be to get the
hard disk patched up to the point that you can get it mounted again. When you
say that it won't boot, that seems strange. Try running fsck -y /dev/fp002,
and watch carefully what it does. If you get a bad block in the free list, or
other such nastiness, you could fsck forever and never change anything. With
your disk in this state, your machine will be stuck in the check-boot-check
loop. It sounds like you've given up on this disk and all you want to do is
get some files off.

When booted from the floppy, cd to /mnt/etc and add these lines:
is:1:initdefault:
cn:1:respawn:/bin/sh >/dev/console </dev/console 2>&1
and add a ":" to the beginning of these two lines:
is:2:initdefault:
rc::bootwait:/etc/rc > /dev/null 2>&1

Yes, you will have to use vi in open mode!

Save out and try to reboot to the hard disk. You should get a # prompt about
5 seconds after the "... Main board is ..." stuff. No window driver, no disk
check. This should free up the floppy drive so you can get stuff off.

John
-- 
John Bly Milton IV, jbm at uncle.UUCP, n8emr!uncle!jbm at osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu
(614) h:294-4823, w:764-2933; AMPR: 44.70.0.52;  Don't FLAME, inform!