I lost inittab on one of my systems a couple of weeks ago and had
the same problem.  Fortunately, I had another system with the 
same linux distribution on it and I tar'd that inittab to floppy,
popped in the install diskette on the affected system, started the
install process, and when I got to the point in the install where
I could toggle over to another VT (Redhat and derivatives start a
shell on tty2) cd to /mnt/etc, and untar the floppy.  I'd imagine
that the point in the install process at which you're able to do 
this varies from one distribution to another.  

But definitely get a UPS.

Tony Hammitt wrote:
> 
> Get a bootable CD, back up your user files to somewhere like the windows
> partition, then reinstall Linux.  This is the easiest thing to do.
> 
> Then go out and get a battery backup.  They're only $100 or so and until
> Linux comes with a journalling filesystem as standard equipment, all
> users should have a battery backup.  The time savings alone will pay for
> it in the short run.  All users should also insist on error correcting
> memory, too.  Heck, even windows will run better with ECC memory.
> 
> If anyone wants to post an actual fix for this system, that'd probably
> be more welcome than my standard 'get a battery backup' rant...
-- 
Dave Parker/DLP, Inc.    dlparker@dlpinc.com    www.dlpinc.com
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