[ale] more from Courtney on -> sytem hangs after init mounts filesystems..........

[Courtney Thomas]

Keith, thank you for helping me again.

The situation:
	I have an older RedHat6.1 system on which I run an Oracle [raid5] 
database. This is the only reason I run this system and want to avoid 
starting over installing Oracle on ANYTHING.

This system has 3 different [proprietary drivers] scsi cards in it. I 
need to be able to boot up from floppies and backup to tape the 
unmounted database, and such. The system currently boots but I have only 
avoided losing the database because it is on separate hardware, i.e. the 
raid5 rig.

RH6.1 comes with a mkbootdisk program that will create a boot disk that 
boots up the OS from floppy but, mkbootdisk then installs the system HD 
as root [which is different from the raid HDs].  So, I need to create 
custom boot/root floppies so I can boot a floppy, not the system HD, as 
root and backup to tape the unmounted system HD, as well as the raid5 rig.

So.......I now have a viable boot disk. But, am stymied at the root 
floppy creation, which I need to know how to do, in any case, since I 
run several flavors of Linux.

I am following the Bootdisk-HOWTO but it can't be entirely explicit 
because of all the flavors of Linux out there, so I'm uncertain as to 
where in the boot process I am, so, as you've suggested, stepping 
through would be great, if I could do it. At least I'd know where it's 
hanging. But I'm not sure which processes are sequenced, much less their 
individual steps and what files contain said instruction sequences.

As I understand it, RH uses a SystemV type bootup, i.e. the rc* 
concatenation.

In the boot process I am now where the root floppy is running [the boot 
floppy, as distinguished from the root floppy, is through] and... after 
a compressed file system is loaded into ram and executed, a request for 
a root floppy to be inserted into the floppy drive has been made which I 
successfully execute. After this I see messages on the screen that seem 
to say that, the root filesystem marker is replaced with a pointer to 
the just introduced floppy root filesystem and then the filesystems in 
fstab are loaded, the last of which is /proc. This is where all is 
hung.....i.e. after /proc is mounted. No more messages and the floppy 
drive light stays on, interminably.

I am, in the boot process, up to init running inittab, I think, which I 
have altered to include only what is indicated in the Bootdisk-HOWTO [on 
www.linux.org] as being minimal. In particular, rc only mounts 
[successfully apparently] the filesystems and assigns a hostname. It is 
after this that death occurs  :-(

The "rc" file contains the following:
#!/bin/sh
/bin/mount -a
/bin/hostname redsrv

The exact messages that appear on the screen, as this process dies are:

VFS: Insert root floppy to be loaded into RAM disk and press ENTER
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root .... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 60k freed
/proc on /proc type proc (rw)
.
.
THE /proc on /proc LINE IS THE LAST THING SEEN ON THE SCREEN

Gratefully,
Courtney



Keith Hopkins wrote:

> Courtney Thomas wrote:
> 
>> Thanks Keith. Good to hear from you again.
>>
>> I'm trying to create root & boot floppies [2]. My boot floppy is fine. 
>> It pauses and requests the root floppy be inserted after loading all 3 
>> needed scsi drivers. Init IIRC then replaces the initial ramdisk with 
>> /dev/fd0 as /, then mounts everything, the last being /proc 
>> and..............hangs.
>>
>> I'd love to "manually step through the startup with some 
>> debugging/verbose switches" !
>>
>> How ?
> 
> 
> Modify the rc script (/etc/init.d/rc on my system) on your boot floppy 
> to start with
> #!/bin/bash -xv
> 
> You can do the same on any other startup script, too.  
> /etc/init.d/boot.* comes to mind.  boot.localfs mounts /proc for me.
> 
> Can you boot this system some other way (CD-ROM?).  If so, compare the 
> start-up for that boot, with the start-up of your floppies.  Anything 
> (drivers!) different?  Any additional hw getting initialized?
> 


-- 
In response to an article in The Economist entitled Marx After Communism 
dated 12/21/02,

".....we have a president purchased by corporations in a sham election 
who has put those corporations in charge of their own regulation. A 
string of corporate scandals has exposed the myth of shareholder 
control....."

Mark Spohr	Tahoe City, Ca. [1/18/03]

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