Arch Linux

JerichoKru

Member

From: East Coast US

Registered: 2009-02-19

Posts: 80

Website

[Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

As the title says, my inittab file is gone, making me unable to boot into...anything.  It does ask me for a run level, only to return "No more processes on this level".

Can someone post their inittab file so I can make a new one?  Or know a way to recover it?

Last edited by JerichoKru (2010-02-08 15:00:47)

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

Unmodified /etc/inittab

#
# /etc/inittab
#

#  Runlevels:
#    0    Halt
#    1(S)    Single-user
#    2    Not used
#    3    Multi-user
#    4    Not used
#    5    X11
#    6    Reboot

## Only one of the following two lines can be uncommented!
# Boot to console
id:3:initdefault:
# Boot to X11
#id:5:initdefault:

rc::sysinit:/etc/rc.sysinit
rs:S1:wait:/etc/rc.single
rm:2345:wait:/etc/rc.multi
rh:06:wait:/etc/rc.shutdown
su:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin -p

# -8 options fixes umlauts problem on login
c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty1 linux
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty2 linux
c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty3 linux
c4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty4 linux
c5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty5 linux
c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 tty6 linux

# Hypervisor Virtual Console for Xen and KVM
#h0:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 38400 hvc0 linux

ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

# Example lines for starting a login manager
x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon
#x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/gdm -nodaemon
#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon
#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >& /dev/null

# End of file

You may want to reinstall initscripts as soon as possible.

JerichoKru

Member

From: East Coast US

Registered: 2009-02-19

Posts: 80

Website

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

You may want to reinstall initscripts as soon as possible.

How would I go about doing that?

Remaking the inittab only got me slightly farther.

I'm not even sure how I removed that....I don't remember uninstalling any packages with that name.

Last edited by JerichoKru (2010-02-08 04:46:58)

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,356

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

Are you using a journalling file-system without sufficient caching? Did you experience a hard crash?

And please give details on 'slightly further', it may not be the only thing affected.

---

Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

JerichoKru

Member

From: East Coast US

Registered: 2009-02-19

Posts: 80

Website

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

Are you using a journalling file-system without sufficient caching? Did you experience a hard crash?

And please give details on 'slightly further', it may not be the only thing affected.

I'm using rieserfs and all was fine until a reboot.

As I said in my first post, since inittab was missing, it would ask for a runlevel and return with

INIT: No more processes in this runlevel

no matter which one I pick.

Re-adding the inittab made it stop asking for a runlevel but errors:

INIT: version 2.86 booting
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/rc.sysinit"
INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/rc.multi"
Id "c1" respawned to fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Id "c3" respawned to fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Id "c5" respawned to fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Id "c4" respawned to fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Id "c6" respawned to fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Id "c2" respawned to fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: no more processes on this runlevel

I figured something strange was going on when I noticed my rc.config got wiped...not sure how...thankfully I had a backup of that.

The hard drive is fine, since Windows has no issues.

Last edited by JerichoKru (2010-02-08 05:11:31)

grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

It looks like you are not just missing inittab, but a lot of other files as well. At this point I would probably back up my data and then reinstall. Alternatively you could try to boot the live CD and then reinstall the base system on your partition using pacman --root.

---

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

JerichoKru

Member

From: East Coast US

Registered: 2009-02-19

Posts: 80

Website

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

I appear to have resolved it by copying the missing files from another Arch install from another PC.

ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

Do "sudo pacman -Qqk" and you can see a list of any files pacman thinks are missing. You should install the packages they come from again. (You should ignore any results from ttf-ms-fonts while you're doing this, that's a false positive.)

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: [Solved]Inittab file mysteriously disappears

pacman -Qqk

No need to run local pacman queries with root privileges.