Slipstream

Hi,

I'm having fdisk failures at boot, but I can't see where the problem starts because the boot messages scroll by too fast. Is there a way to scroll back upward---or even to stop the boot process---so the messages can be read?

Thanks for any replies!

tlarkin

look into your log files under /var/log typically (may be slightly different) and then copy/paste any messages that could help us figure it out.

if you need help, go to terminal and type this
that will list all directories under /var. I can't remember off the top of my head what exact directory they are in, but if you copy/paste the results of the ls I can navigate you through.

Slipstream

Thanks tlarkin, but I can't access the /var directory. In fact, I can't even login to the root console. I need to scroll upward. It seems to be the only chance I've got.

This is all part of a bigger problem that I just posted about. I don't know if it is fault of Linux or mb.
Boot process hangs - mb failure?

tlarkin

boot off the cd, run terminal and do the same thing, but you will need to do a cd / first.

Slipstream

Ok, I finally got some of this stuff figured out---in particular, how to read the files!

The only one I could open is /var/log/boot.msg. Nothing seems out of place, until it stops at lines:

Skipped services in runlevel 3: nfs nfsboot
<notice>killproc: kill(4274,3)

Seems like all the /dev/md still exist. But the file systems don't get mounted. I guess that happens after runlevel 3. Could this be mechanical failure?

Slipstream

I finally figured out how to read /var/log/boot.msg. Nothing seems out of place, until it stops at lines:

Skipped services in runlevel 3: nfs nfsboot
<notice>killproc: kill(4274,3)

Seems like all the /dev/md still exist. But the file systems don't get mounted. I guess that happens after runlevel 3.

What could this be?

tlarkin

use this

look for any obvious errors

Slipstream

Yes, I did that. There's nothing obviously wrong. It stops at runlevel 3, like I stated. Nothing more to report.

Just wish I could scroll upward through the actual boot messages to see where it all begins. I don't think it's all being logged.

tlarkin

try

cat /var/log/boot.menu head -100

That will print the first 100 lines of the log file, but I doubt its that big...


can you boot into run level 1? and run a fsck?

Slipstream

The file doesn't exist.



No, there's a problem with some module. I can't even login as root user.


I'm about to order a copy of Windows, but I'm still hopeful that this is hardware related...if that's something one can be hopeful about :-/