Boot problems (FC4)

[Ed Greshko]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Monday 26 June 2006 10:25, Tim wrote:
>> On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 19:16 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:
>>> It's somewhat disconcerting that when ntpd failed to make the
>>> connection the whole bootup process failed.  I would have wished for a
>>> failure notice then the rest of the bootup to continue.
>> Is it really the case, or are you mistaking cause and effect?
>>
> Hi, Tim.  I'm not sure, but I don't think I am.
> 
>> e.g. Name resolution or networking isn't working, and NTPD being just
>> one thing that doesn't cope with it, but the last thing that you saw.
>>
> No, it wasn't.  Eventually it did continue for a few more steps, and 'enabling 
> swap' (or similar) was the last thing I saw.  If you know any way that I can 
> get useful info if/when it happens again, I'd be glad to know.

FWIW, the exact same thing happened on my RHELv4 system the other day
when there was a millisecond power failure and my system crashed.  My
RHELv3 system rode out the power drop.

Anyway, staring at the screen I noted that ntpd startup was hanging as
well as cupsd.  I let it alone and sure enough after maybe 10 minutes it
completed booting.

The culprit?  While the ADSL router's lights proclaimed it was UP it
really wasn't.  Rebooted the router.  And then rebooted the system again
just to check.  No problem.

At least in my case it was a symptom of network outage and services that
are making DNS requests in the course of starting up stalling.  However,
you may want to change your grub configuration to disable rgb (redhat
graphical boot) as you'll be able to follow wants going on with greater
accuracy.

Ed


-- 
   Verbing weirds language.
              --- Calvin.