fault mount and cannot edit fstab or remount root

[RimBlock]

Hi,

I have a disk which failed while I was copying some data from another machine to it. I rebooted the server (centos 5.5) and it went to a fschk for that disk. Part way through the check failed and it dumped me to the recovery console.

I rebooted thinking the disk would just be marked as a problem on reboot and the system would come up... nope it dropped me to recovery console again after a failed fschk on the problem disk.

i pulled the disk and rebooted only to get grub written at the top left of the scrren and no OS boot. It seems pulling the disk had reassigned device ids so grub could not boot the os.

I put a spare disk in the machine and it booted but then failed as it could not mount the partition from the failed disk. i went to edit the fstab bur as root was mounted ro i could not. i have tried to mount the root partition on another mount point but am told the device is busy and already mounted,on /

so i cannot bring the machine up past recovery console and cannot remount /dev/sda2 (/ partition) anywhere else.

short of partitioning the new disk in the hope it can be mounted, how else cn i bring the machine back up ?

thanks
RB

sorry for typos etc. this has been sent from my phone.
Edit: Corrected from a real PC so people may have a chance to understand it

 

[RimBlock]

Edited the original from a PC. I will have to practice at posting from my mobile .

Ahh, Live DVD, yep I guess that would do it. I will have to download one tonight when I get home.

Any other way to do it without a Live CD, just for interests sake more than anything.

Cheers
RB

 

[RimBlock]

Ok, will give that a go as well.

Trying to read the man pages on the recovery console is a major pain though if they are available.

just doing a mount --help has pages of text scrolling up the screen. Fine for a terminal session but not for the console with no scrolling.

Will have a read-up from here (work).

Cheers
RB

 

[RimBlock]

Thanks Guys,

Yep 'more' or 'less' would work of course but the obvious does not always come to mind when you are meant to be getting yourself and the kids ready for work / school .

The only reason I was looking at it was because I wanted to kick off a 1TB transfer before going to work .

I will give the -o a try and if not then work from the Live CD.

Thanks again
RB

 

[RimBlock]

Just to update, mount -o did the job.

Thanks again
RB