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I accidentally did something to fstab, and now I can't get in to my Debian computer
I've pressed enter and it doesn't solve the problem, and I've tried rebooting, but that just brings me back to this
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You don't even need to boot into a rescue system or different medium to recover from that. This just needs help in mounting the necessary partitions for your system to continue booting.
Enter your root user password then use
lsblkto see the storage volumes present. You can then use themountcommand to mount the root partition and any other partitions necessary for the system to boot.If you remember installing with encryption use
cryptsetup luksOpento mount your encrypted container.If you remember installing with LVM use
pvscan,lvscan, andlvchangeto activate your LVM.Once done use
exitto complete the boot process, then fix your "/etc/fstab" immediately.Per the message on their screen, their root account is locked. IE it probably doesn't have a password set, and instead has
*in the shadow file or something like that.Don't panic. You'll need to boot off something else as the os can't understand your current fstab config.
Download the latest system rescue iso here:
https://www.system-rescue.org/
Write it to a usb (assuming you have another working computer of some sort?)
Boot from that and follow the on-screen prompts to get to a command prompt, then run startx to start a graphical session
This will take you a recognisable gui. You need to identify your hard drive partition that contains the etc directory and moun it somewhere. Then you can go in and edit the fstab
Let us know how it goes
So, that brought up a thing that resembled command line with grub>
I don't know what I'm supposed to do from here if this is even working correctly. I tried startx, and it didn't recognize that command.
use a bootable media and fix the fstab with chroot
You don't need to chroot. Just boot off a different medium and mount the partition with the /etc, then edit it to undo the error
You do not need a chroot for that, unlike if you had to use
apton your non-bootable system.Doesn't need chroot, he/she can just edit fstab from within the current root.
You only need chroot if you wanna run something from within that other root. It's a common practice in musl installs if you'd like to run glib applications. Most will run in musl, but some just refuse and need glib to run.
Also, if you'd like to fix grub, yeah, you'll need chroot (not necessarily, but it's wise to fix with chroot).
Boot using live media (usb) mount the partition with /etc and updo the change in fstab
Cat /etc/fstab please