[Techtalk] XP with Linux

[Mary]

On Sun, Jun 15, 2003, Deanna Dunker wrote:
> I tried getting in through knoppix, but it said it was unable to write to 
> the drive to install grub.  Any suggestions?  I'd like to be able to get 
> back in to linux.

Check if it has mounted your root partition (or boot partition) read
only, typing "mount" will should you all mounted disks. Each one will
have a series of flags in () braces. If one of those flags is "ro", the
disk is read-only.

It is also possible for this flag to be wrong, by the way. The "mount"
command reads /etc/mtab to get these details, but if the disk was
mounted read-only, it is very possible that the original mount couldn't
write to /etc/mtab to write that it had mounted / read-only!

Hence, looking at the contents of the /proc/mount file may also be
useful (/proc files are not stored on the harddisk).

If it is a disk you can write to (like a hard disk), you can remount it
read-write like this (assuming your root partition is /dev/hdf1, replace
"/dev/hdf1" with the correct drive):

mount /de/hdf1 / -o remount,rw

-Mary