Can't Enable Swap Space

From: Dan Sommers (me_at_privacy.net)
Date: 02/12/05 

Date: 11 Feb 2005 23:33:31 -0500

Hi,

I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a Gateway Pentium 4 box.

I installed my own server starup scripts in /etc/rc.d/, but I made a
mistake, and didn't get the daemonizing quite right, and the boot
process "hung" because my server was running in the foreground instead.

No problem: I'll just hit the hardware reset button, jump into single
user mode, edit my startup script so that it doesn't do anything, finish
booting to run level 5, fix the problem, and try again.

Now there's a problem: I managed to get a single-user shell (or what I
thought was a single-user shell, anyway; I following the directions on
the screen and pressed 'I' for an interactive boot and 'Y' to force a
filesystem check), but all the file systems came up as read-only. After
a couple of unsuccessful tries at this, the boot sequence looks
something like this (from my scribbled notes; the system is at school
and I'm posting this message from home):

    :
    :
    :
    [ fsck runs here ]
    /: clean
    umount: /initrd: device is busy
    Remounting root in rw mode
    Activating swap partitions
    Checking file systems
    /boot: recovering journal
    /boot: clean [ some stats about files and blocks ]
    Mounting local filesystems
    Enabling local filesystem quotas
    Enabling swap space

and then there's about a minute of heavy disk activity and then nothing.

Can someone point me to a way to recover gracefully?

Can someone point me to a way to salvage my development directory and
recover ungracefully? The project's source code would fit onto a floppy
disk (or two, at most) if it comes to that; we haven't yet gone into
production, so there's no live data to worry about.

Is it as simple as booting from the CD, making a filesystem on a floppy
and running a cp commands (or even just formatting a floppy and tarring
directly to its device), and reinstalling? If so, can someone point me
to things like device names and the right mkfs incantations?

I apologize if I'm overlooking something simple; feel free to tell me
that and point me at a FAQ, too.

*Thank you*.

Regards,
Dan 

-- 
Dan Sommers
<http://www.tombstonezero.net/dan/>
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
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