Power cut woes

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 09/28/2009 11:57 AM, Philip Heron wrote:
> Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
>> I'd look into the "errors" that happen way before hal tries to start.
>> I'd probably force an fsck on the partition that holds /etc because it
>> looks like your /etc/passwd file is messed up....  Maybe all of your
>> filesystems....  Then, again, perhaps this is the result of running fsck
>> on your filesystems after the power failures.  You may be SOL if you
>> were running fsck and took a power hit.  If that's the case, a
>> re-install may be your best bet.
> 
> I suspect this might be the case - the second and third cut where only a
> minute apart, the machine would have been in the middle of starting up
> again.
> 
>> Do you have file fragments in your top
>> level lost+found directories?
> 
> e2fsck -f says it's clean, lost+found is empty. I tried starting up in
> runlevel 2 and although it boots up a lot quicker there are still a load
> of errors (mostly concerning missing users or UIDs) and I can't log in.
> The most I can do is restart it with Ctrl+Alt+Del.

You want to boot into runlevel 1 (single user mode).  If you do it
right, you'll already be the root user.  If it continually prompts you
for a password, you'll need a "rescue" disk to boot from.

> I don't know what all files are involved in the user database, but
> passwd and shadow seem fine? root and my own user are in there.

Attack your errors one at a time, starting with the first error.  Check
the /var/log/dmesg and /var/log/boot.log files for more information.

> -Phil

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)