Where to go what to do!!! 1

[hyperdaz]

I have a SUN Ultra 60 creator3D running OS 5.8.

This machine has been sitting in a corner for a year and this is the first time it has been started up.

When I start the machine I get :

"Type Control -d to proceed with normal startup, (or give root password for system maintenace):"

typing Control Shift D asks for init run level... no matter what I select I get the following message.

"init: Cannot create /var/adm/utmpx"

if I go into system maintenace typing things like ls does nothing...

All help needed.

Thanks
Hyper

--
experiance level with these machines 0%
--
experiace with *nix 25%

 

[Morsing]

No need to do a file system check and reboot (ctrl-d)

fsck -a (I think)

Or just the file system it complains about and then ctrl-d will reboot.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[bi]

It sounds as if perhaps your /var filesystem is full, which would be why it can't create the /var/adm/utmpx file.

When you go into maintenance mode, not much is mounted. If you type /sbin/mount /usr, you should get most of the commands you need to poke around and find out what the problems are(like a full /var) and fix them.

 

[Morsing]

Ok, my post wasn't very clear (kinda confusing actually).

It probably can find var because it's not mounted. It's probably not mounted because you *do* need to run a filesystem check on some file system (not necessarily /var).

WHen you get into maintenance mode do 'fsck -a'.

When it's done od <ctrl-d>, that will reboot and you're ready to go.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[hyperdaz]

Thanks for your time etc..

/sbin/mount /usr came back with the following
&quot;mount point can not be determined&quot;

and running fsck -a came back with the following too
&quot;fsck: illegal option --a
Useage:
fsck [-F FSType] [-V][-m] [special ...]
fsck [-F FSType] [-V[-y|Y|n|N] [-o specific_options] [special...]

just running fsck on its own
/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s7
Last Mounted on /export/home
Phase 1 - 5 etc......

1109 files, 46620 used, 6528304 free (960 frags, 815918 blocks, 0.0% fragmention)

rerunning init 3 gives the same error Cannot create /var/adm/utmpx

any other ideas?

 

[bi]

go back into maintenance mode, mount /var and see if it is full. If it is, check for core files in the file system, other large files that can be deleted or pruned.

And check the ownership and permissions on the utmpx file. Mine is owned by root:bin and the permissions are 644.

 

[bi]

And one other thing: If this system has been sitting in a corner unused for a year, there is no telling what state the system is in, especially if the person who was taking care of it before is no longer around.

It may turn out that you will need to reinstall the OS.

 

[hyperdaz]

ReInstall the OS OH MY GOD no...

lol

Hey word of joy was buggering about etc.. and then decided to reboot...

OH MY GOD rebooting the machine everything started perfectly...

Now to work out what I need to do with the machine so I know how to do it... anyway more on that later..

REBOOTING UNIX has the world gone mad...

P.S. I was about to install from Sol CDs just wondered if they would boot from the CD do they??? never detected media to boot from and booted from harddrive oh well..

thanks for the help - stay right there I'll need more

 

[Annihilannic]

You need to drop to the 'ok' prompt and type boot -s cdrom to boot from the CD in single user mode, from which you could perform repairs as necessary.

Dropping to the 'ok' prompt can be accomplished by hitting 'Stop-A' during the boot process. Annihilannic.