[Glastonbury] Chroot

[tim hall]

Martin,

As you asked, and I was too tired to explain anything properly last night - 
this is roughly the relevant info. I'm sure you're well capable of figuring 
this all out yourself, but I post this here in case anyone else has an 
interest in doing this & fyi.

Debian-Reference ch:8.6.34

This is how my woody system looks:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system>	<mount point>	<type>	<options>		<dump>	<pass>
/dev/hda6	/		ext2	errors=remount-ro	0	1
/dev/hda9	none		swap	sw			0	0
proc		/proc		proc	defaults			0	0
/dev/fd0	/floppy			auto	user,noauto		0	0
/dev/cdrom	/cdrom		iso9660	ro,user,noauto		0	0
/dev/hda5	/boot		ext2	defaults			0	2
/dev/hda7	/usr		ext2	defaults,noatime		0	2
/dev/hda8	/home		ext2	defaults			0	2
/dev/hda10	/tmp		ext2	defaults			0	2
/dev/hda11	/var		ext2	defaults			0	2
/dev/hdb5	/mnt		ext2	defaults			0	2
proc-test	/mnt/proc	proc	none			0	0
/dev/hdb1	/mnt/boot	ext2	defaults			0	2
/dev/hdb6	/mnt/usr		ext2	defaults,noatime		0	2
/dev/hdb7	/mnt/tmp		ext2 	defaults			0	2
/dev/hdb8	/mnt/var		ext2	defaults			0	2
/dev/hdb9	/mnt/home	ext2	defaults			0	2

[snipped from /etc/inittab]
# /sbin/getty invocations for the runlevels.
#
# The "id" field MUST be the same as the last
# characters of the device (after "tty").
#
# Format:
#  <id>:<runlevels>:<action>:<process>
#
# Note that on most Debian systems tty7 is used by the X Window System,
# so if you want to add more getty's go ahead but skip tty7 if you run X.
#
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -f /etc/issue.linuxlogo 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -f /etc/issue.linuxlogo 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -f /etc/issue.linuxlogo 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -f /etc/issue.linuxlogo 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -f /etc/issue.linuxlogo 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -f /etc/issue.linuxlogo 38400 tty6
8:23:respawn:/usr/sbin/chroot /mnt /sbin/getty 38400 tty8

[and I added this to the bottom of /etc/gdm/gdm.conf]
[servers]
0=Standard vt9

obviously you then have to do:

mount -a 	
init q
/etc/init.d/gdm restart

in the chrooted system, or something similar.

This now means I can access my testing/unstable system with [ctl][alt]F8 and 
the gui is on [ctl][alt]F9

It's not perfect, I think there's a few things I need to find out about yet 
[haha!] sometimes fsck complains about badly unmounted partitions, I have to 
check what I'm doing in these circumstances - I suspect trying to reboot from 
the wrong terminal is something to do with it. One day I'll get round to 
using a sturdier filesystem like reiserfs, but it all takes time and reading 
(so much reading!).

anyhow HTH

tim hall