Get me out of this?

[Soap]

Running SuSe8.1.
Everything was/seemed fine just out the blue(browsing with netscape7.1, listening to a CD)locked up tight.
Couldn't close any apps, KDE and etc.
Couldn't even use Ctrl-Alt-delete to do a reboot.
Only way to reboot was hitting the reset button on the tower.
Whatever happened I can't get into linux/SuSe8.1 anymore.
It boots up and gives me the boot screen to choose which OS I want to boot. It boots fine into windows but SuSe8.1 won't even when I select it.
What it does when I do choose SuSe is, it boots into the sequence of detecting hardware and file system and alittle touch further, it comes up in console requesting a password.
When I type the password it says "(none):~#" and also says, "In maintanance mode only CONTROL-D will reboot.
Once I type in the password I have console access to type whatever.
Folks, I really, really, really don't want to reinstall SuSe, even if its painlessly easy to do so, it's just to time consuming.
Any fixes?
Thanks

[Annakonda]

login,

do:

mount remount -o ro /

Assuming you're using ext2/ext3:
e2fsck /dev/hdxy (where hdxy is your root partition)

^D

[Soap]

Typed # mount remount -o ro /
the response was "special device remount does not exist"

[Annakonda]

Originally posted by Soap
Typed # mount remount -o ro /
the response was "special device remount does not exist"

Sorry The command is:

# mount -o remount -o ro /

[Soap]

To provide more detail insight, this link describes identically, exactly my scenario.
I'm not sure if I understand the "sda5".
I got one HD for windows and one HD for SuSe.
Its obviously the linux device drive thats not accessing but what I would type in for substitution of the "sda5" I have no idea.
I'll try the command mount -o remount -o ro / first and see what happens.
Fixed the link:http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/rb_fsckerror.html

[nmayotte]

sda refers do a certain hard drive, specifically a primary, master, that is scsi. Assuming you have ide drives, they follow a certain labeling scheme. hda refers to the primary chain master, hdb is the primary slave, hdc is secondary master and so on. Someone else probably has a better understanding of what the number afterwards means, but it refers to a specific partition on that drive. I think by default SuSE assigns hda5/sda5 to be the / partition. btw that link doesn't work for me

[Annakonda]

Soap, first check out what partition is mounted as the root partition:

# su
[enter password]
# mount
[You'll get something like this:]
/dev/hdb5 on / type reiserfs (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /dev type devfs (rw)
tmpfs on /mnt/.init.d type tmpfs (rw,mode=0644,size=2048k)
/dev/hdb6 on /home type reiserfs (rw,noatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/hdb8 on /mnt/storage type vfat (ro,gid=407,umask=027)

[Check the line which says '/dev/hdxx on / type foobar', the /dev/hdxxx is your root partition]

Then, when you boot and end up in the login shell you were talking about, do:

mount -o remount -o ro /
e2fsck /dev/hdxx (where /dev/hdxx is the device you got from the command above).

Make sure you use the right tool for filesystem checking. That is, for ext2/ext3 filesystems, it's e2fsck. For reiserfs, it's reiserfsck.

Good luck!