Comment 28 for bug 431040

  With ctrl-d and without a root password, though it does little good if you cannot get past a bad fsck run like in the past. Workaround if you have no rescue flash drive would be to go to the shell(assuming you DO have a root password set), mount -o remount, rw / , nano /etc/fstab and set the fsck pass numbers to zero, the mount -o remount, ro / and exit the shell. This will disable fsck and allow you to boot. Just be sure to change it back after fixing the problems!

Again, the fact that Ubuntu does not by default encourage use of a root password could be a real mess if an fsck bypass is not included when mountall is restarted after leaving the mantainance shell. Either fsck was just run, or it cannot be run at the moment, and either way it should not be run again.

Perhaps the shell upon closing could pass a flag variable to mountall that would cause it to skip a second fsck run?

> Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:03:18 +0000
> From: <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Subject: [Bug 431040] The latest mountall version as of Oct 9
>
>
> I've done more testing of this with forced fsck runs (generated by the
> utc clock bug-reconfigure tzdata to "utc", then BIOS clock to local time
> to avoid this), and the shell works, though the first login prompt
> refuses the root password, echoing it to the console(DANGEROUS in some
> environments) and you must try again.
>
> There is still one serious problem: because the shell is external to
> mountall, fsck re-runs and errors out again if you try to skip with
> control-d! This could be especially bad if someone has not manually set
> a root password, assuming the system still demands one.
>
> I am about to roll back the time again and see if it is even possible to
> control-d out of the shell with no root password at all.
>
> If this is not fixed, Ubuntu Karmic should prompt for a root password by default on installation AND on upgrade, otherwise end users without rescue flash drives/disks could get seriously locked out.
>
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> --
> separate /var and /var/tmp tmpfs dependency loop
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/431040
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