Power cut woes

[Philip Heron]

Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
> I'd look into the "errors" that happen way before hal tries to start.
> I'd probably force an fsck on the partition that holds /etc because it
> looks like your /etc/passwd file is messed up....  Maybe all of your
> filesystems....  Then, again, perhaps this is the result of running fsck
> on your filesystems after the power failures.  You may be SOL if you
> were running fsck and took a power hit.  If that's the case, a
> re-install may be your best bet.

I suspect this might be the case - the second and third cut where only a 
minute apart, the machine would have been in the middle of starting up 
again.

> Do you have file fragments in your top
> level lost+found directories?

e2fsck -f says it's clean, lost+found is empty. I tried starting up in 
runlevel 2 and although it boots up a lot quicker there are still a load 
of errors (mostly concerning missing users or UIDs) and I can't log in. 
The most I can do is restart it with Ctrl+Alt+Del.

I don't know what all files are involved in the user database, but 
passwd and shadow seem fine? root and my own user are in there.

-Phil