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Louis
Asked: 2013-02-13 05:37:15 +0800 CST

Unable to mount filesystem as read-write in recovery mode

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I deleted two unused user accounts. Now I am unable to login even into my own account. I rebooted in recovery mode in the root shell and tried to restore the back-up of /etc/passwd. However, the filesystem is read-only!

I can only access root shell via recovery.

Can you help me?

read-only

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If I am not wrong, the filesystem is mounted read-only by default in Recovery mode. To mount it as read-write, go the recovery mode and choose root. Now type the following command:

    mount -o rw,remount /

    Note the spaces, you'll get an error if you ignore the spaces, or add extra ones too. And then you can copy as you tried earlier.

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  2. Recently on my Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, I encountered error "System is running in low-graphics mode" and there is no way you can login or proceed beyond this error screen.

    For me this happened when I renamed /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d directory while I was trying to solve one of the graphics related problems.

    Workaround:

    On the error window, press ctrl+alt+f3 to get to the console. Here the filesystem is mounted but in read-only mode so you can't edit to rename the directory back for correction.

    To mount the filesystem in read-write mode, use following command

    Command: mount -o rw,remount /

    It would mount the filesystem in read-write mode. Now you can correct the name of the directory using mv command. Then, use exit command and Press Alt + → multiple times till you get to the UI again.

    If required, reboot the system using reboot command, now you should be able to login as usual.

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