Check the startup messages (page up on the initial screen if you can) and verify that /usr is mounting correctly. I recently had a similar problem on a machine that had /usr installed in a partition separate from /. Without /usr mounted, the machine could not find grep/egrep, which breaks some important part of the boot process, leading to an error that sound similar to yours. If there is a problem with /usr; fixing that, perhaps using Knoppix, might restore your system to operation.
<clip> Greetings. I have a Debian server that does not complete its boot ... early on, it display a Copyright notice for grep, then for egrep, then for grep again, then for egrep again, then hangs .... I've booted the computer from a Knoppix CD and can see all the files, I just can't get it to boot. I also tried to run fsck from Knoppix but, whether from my fault or otherwise, that didn't solve the problem. At this point, I'm getting a little desperate. Any and all ideas GREATLY appreciated. Thanks. Kenn Caldwell <clip> Okay, booting in single-user mode got the same results, so I used "linux init = /bin/bash" .... I'm now booted up, and I can do some tasks like changing directories ... but if I try to do a "ls" i get a segementation fault .... FWIW, that's also what I was getting when this problem first presented itself -- that is, I was able to boot okay, but couldn't "ls" ... now, I can't even boot. Where do I go from here? (Oh, and obviously, thanks for the advice.) Kenn Did you make any changes to the system recently? Many years ago I got into a situation very similar to what you describe when I forced a package to install, leaving me with a libc6 that was incompatible with pretty much every program on the computer - including ls. As I was fairly new to the whole Linux thing back then, the easiest for me then was to re-install debian. Hopefully you will not have to take such extreme measures. -- Best regards, Peter Hugosson-Miller -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]