hang on boot: solved

[beta2]

I encountered the "hang on boot" for serveral days with kernel 2.6.8-1.521, FC2.
It usually hangs at the stage "Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode", "Enabling swap space", or "Updating /etc/fstab".

After googling yesterday, I found some tips. Thanks to the valuable tips in this forum. Now the problem is temporarily solved. Here are my final changes to the FC2 with the help of rescue disk after dozens of reboot:

1. disable autofs service
2. remark out scripts relative to LVM2 in /etc/rc.sysinit

I've given a glance at technical documents on redhat's site, but have no idea why the LVM2 hangs.
Does it really need so much time to "vgscan"? How to disable it correctly?

Hope your comment. If you have the same problem, maybe you can try my solution.

Thanks.

[Jman]

Moved to How-To.

[Matze]

Sry - didn't help for me - but seem to have the same problem: "Enabling swap space: [ OK ]"!

My problem (http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=109884#post109884)

[Matze]

Solved again! :)

After a little more search I found some other solutions - for me it finally worked with this solution:
Starting from rescue disk:
Run "mkswap -c /dev/hda1" (your swap device)
Edit the runlevel in /etc/inittab step by step from 1 to 3 to 5 (and boot each time) - I don't know if this one was actually needed - but oh well, I did it too!

[gablaxian]

I finally did it!

I had the same problem as the people posting previously where my system would hang right after the message 'Enabling Swap Space [OK]'

This problem has plagued this particular machine for quite a while, and has even prevented my from having FC2 installed. And now the problem has returned in FC1.

It occured to me that the first times it ever hung, was at the message Starting Sendmail, then every time after that it would stall at Enabling Swap Space. So after trying all the advice given above, i finally ended up booting into runlevel 1, then at level 3 it hung at Starting Sendmail. So, I removed sendmail, and now it all works!

Looks like i'll be using some other mail program then ...

hope this helps someone else.

[imdeemvp]

i just wonder how much space was being allocated for installation, i never had the problem....so im wondering ???

[akadruid]

bingo! cheers Matze, I had the same problem, being banging my head against a wall with this for ages, your solution worked for me.

[Artemis]

I wanna add something to the solution of this problem.

I had this same problem while configuring core 3 on my system. My system hangs on that sentmail command.
I guess it had something to do with the network device. I'm a proud owner of a wireless PCI card, that's brings me insane some day :eek: . The first time this problem occured was when kudzu detected a new network card, please ignore the configuration and configure the device manual by running the network GUI and do not check Activate device when computer starts. Somehow when this device activates on boot, the sentmail command get confused. The only extra work I created is to activate the network manual after logging in, but adding some lines in the /etc/rc.d/rc.local brings it back to the minimum.

This workaround worked for me, maybe for someone else!!!

[sk123]

I faced the same problem with FC3, when i changed the network setting for the ethernet.
i figured that it hangs out at starting sendmail.

this is realted to domainname and hostname.
while checking for sendmail service, if the system have unresolvable hostname and domainname it hangs up there.

i was having hostname: localhost, and domainname: localdomain.
but i changed to my choice. so the system hangs up due to my unresovable host and domain name.

once you face this problem, boot in the interactive mode, and give yes for all option other than "starting sendmail". then go to network settings.
make sure you change the hostname to "localhost", and domainname to "localdomain".
also make sure the ip address and dns are correct.
this setting is for home user.

if you are in a specific domain say "xyz.net", then get the hostname from the admin and change this setting.
then save it and reboot in the regular way. that shd work.
this is the right solution for that reason.

anyway thanks for other posting.
--sk :mad: :mad: :cool:

[kf6kmx]

I faced the same problem with FC3, when i changed the network setting for the ethernet.
i figured that it hangs out at starting sendmail.

this is realted to domainname and hostname.
while checking for sendmail service, if the system have unresolvable hostname and domainname it hangs up there.

i was having hostname: localhost, and domainname: localdomain.
but i changed to my choice. so the system hangs up due to my unresovable host and domain name.

once you face this problem, boot in the interactive mode, and give yes for all option other than "starting sendmail". then go to network settings.
make sure you change the hostname to "localhost", and domainname to "localdomain".
also make sure the ip address and dns are correct.
this setting is for home user.

if you are in a specific domain say "xyz.net", then get the hostname from the admin and change this setting.
then save it and reboot in the regular way. that shd work.
this is the right solution for that reason.

anyway thanks for other posting.
--sk :mad: :mad: :cool:


You might try editing your /etc/hosts file also, add your choice for the computer name there, with 127.0.0.1 (loopback) or if you are inside a router with NAT, put in your IP address on your network, and see if it likes it.

[Torii]

Could someone explain how to either delete sendmail or do the above steps from scratch for me? When I hit I to get to intereactive boot my machine totally ignores it and goes on to booting. I am not sure how to delete sendmail when I can't boot into fedora. When I am installing I can't not install sendmail, it just installs it even if I deselect it. I had redhat 9 installled on this laptop and everthing was fine. I just wanted to try a different type of linux since this is my kick around comp :P

[leif81]

To disable sendmail from loading on startup you can do the following as root user.

1. Verify it's running (Run level 5 is the one you really care about if you do graphical login)

$ chkconfig --list sendmail

2. Disable it

$ chkconfig sendmail off

3. Verify it's turned off

$ chkconfig --list sendmail

[JohnC]

I am new to linux and this forum. But I remember seeing this post when researching the same problem on my laptop. I'm running rhel4 on a used dell latitude c-600 - previously a windows machine. It hangs on or after "enable swap space"

After google-ing on many sites and emailing them all to our administrator, who is great at linux and was trying to help me fix this, he found a fix. Here is his reply when I suggested we post it to a forum for posterity:

==================================
I don't remember everything I did exactly :)

I noticed it was hanging on starting PCMCIA services so I popped out the pcmcia ethernet card and (at the same time) rebooted interactively, not starting PCMCIA (but starting everything else). Networking didn't work (the minipci card's drivers are part of the pcmcia subsystem), so I tried running the pcmcia startup stuff manually, and it appeared to work fine (loading pcmcia stuff after complete bootup). So then I reactivated PCMCIA on boot, rebooted, and everything worked fine.

So essentially I did nothing!

Jason
===================================

Maybe this will help someone else who is experiencing this problem.

JohnC