I understood the full power of my Knoppix CD today. This is what you should use to repair a fscked up Linux installation; not a boot floppy. Boot using the CD, mount your hard disk, do what you have to do to repair this and you are done. In theory. What I did actually was slightly less heroic. I used the Knoppix installation to recover whatever I could (burned the files to a CD) and sneaked out with my tail between my legs (I did download and compile cdrtools and xcdroast in the Knoppix environment, though, so may be I was not a total wimp).