Server starts hangs during startup

[asaravan]

Hi,

I have installed fedora core 6 and able to make it run quite good.


i decided to change network name and edited /etc/hosts file to add this

:: localhost.localdomain localhost
#i added following line
myipaddr myname

upon restart after activating udev and just before getting login window, it hangs
waiting several hours and nothing happens.
hit ctl-alt-f1 and no use

i couldn't start server in safe mode too (ubuntu offers recovery mode at boot menu)

i would like to know how to fix it.. atleast if am able to start in no-gui mode i can go and revert my edits.. (i don't want to reinstall again, as i put lot of software and setup already,
including tweaking network to make it work)

please help.

thanks
AK

[micagreenmachin]

When you boot, in the grub menu press 'e' to edit. Then, select the line that starts with "kernel" and press 'e' to edit. Go to the end of the line and put a space and then "single" or the number "1". Press enter to save the line, then press 'b' to boot. This should get you into single user mode and, hopefully, it will not hang since it shouldn't be starting the network.

Mine looks like this:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 ro root=/dev/md3 rhgb quiet

I would change it to this for single user mode (no network):
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 ro root=/dev/md3 rhgb quiet 1

Edit your /etc/hosts, then reboot. No need to change anything else to make it boot normally, the instructions above don't make a permenant change to anything.

-Todd

[asaravan]

thanks todd, i was able to revert /etc/hosts file to original values and still didn't start correctly.
earlier i had changed my monitor settings to LCD 1024x840 and so i restore back my xorg.conf file from backup. but they didn't solve the problem.

any other idea, why startup could be hanging.. only thing i see is after udev startup, i get strange colored pattern blinks for sometime then everything seems dies.

is there any option during bootup to set back to original default values?

the other change i did before the problem started was installing xfree86-libs-4.3.0-55 and xfree86-libs-data-4.3.0-55 to enable gui windows for some application to startup (like jdk installer and sybase installer)

any idea what else i can try before going for reinstalling???

thx
AK

[marcrblevins]

Show us your /etc/hosts

[micagreenmachin]

I think there may be a problem starting X. Try booting into run level 3 (replace 'singe' or '1' in the instructions I gave you and replace with '3'). This will give you a working network, but no gui - command line only. Then you can try to run:
startx

If it hangs, hit [ctrl]+[alt]+[f2] to get another terminal. Then, you can check the log /var/log/Xorg.0.log for clues.

Hope that helps,
-Todd

[asaravan]

Hi micagreenmachin ,
first thanks for the response.

i revert back my /etc/hosts file now it has just
::1 localhost.localdomain localhost

added 192.x.x.x AK AK
also boots fine in run3 and able to make internet works
only problem it takes longer time for "send mail" daemon to start.

coming startx, again it went on hang and no key responded. ctl-alt-f2 (any other fx keys) didn't work
either. eventually i had to power off of my box.
checking xorg.0.log , i am not finding much luck.

the last line reads,

(II) default pointer: ps2EnableDataReproting: Succeeded.


if needed i can upload the log here.

please help
thanks
AK

[asaravan]

BTW, how can send a mail from my character mode unix terminal.
i tried
send -S subject email id < <filen>

i didn't get any email... not sure if the from address doesn't ahve a domail will it fail?

using elinks to access yahoo.com and fails because it require java to be enabled..

thx
AK

[marcrblevins]

Your /etc/hosts file doesn't look right, you need that 127.0.0.1 line.

My hosts file:
[root@kiriyamablevins ~]# cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 kiriyamablevins.dyndns.org kiriyamablevins localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 kiriyamablevins.dyndns.org kiriyamablevins localhost.localdomain localhost
[root@kiriyamablevins ~]#

[asaravan]

Hi tech-ees,

i tried adding 127.0.0.1 line to /etc/hosts and it didn't help either, as expected
it just took to start sendmail and sm-client daemons to start...
infact my original /etc/hosts didn't have that line.


i have attached my xorg conf and xorg log.
please let me know if it has anything interesting. ( i end up in using ftp to my office site
to get those files)


also i was wondering, if you can send your .conf file that i would like to try.
can i revert my installation of XFree86.... libraries? like libXp.so.6 etc?

thanks
AK

[marcrblevins]

Well, in your first post, you mentioned FC6 was running good until you changed your /etc/hosts. Figure I gave you the default layout. You did more than changing /etc/hosts file?

Find anything useful in your /var/log files for clues?

[asaravan]

Hi Todd,

When i last time boot fine(with gui enabled) following things i did.
1. installed sybase software
2. installer required to have
xfree86-libs-4.3.0-55 and xfree86-libs-data-4.3.0-55
using rpm

set a variable called LD_POINTER_GUARD=0 ( i even tried to unset this variable and ran startx which hung again)

then my installer worked fine.

3. then i reboot the server and then my startx hung since then.

i don't know what libarries dhat Xfree thing added to my system and not sure how to avoid them.

thanks
AK

[asaravan]

thinking about reinstalling fedora...
this time will get xfree libs installed first too see if it breaks x-windows
thx
AK

[asaravan]

It seems like startx is not crashing anymore this is what i did,
i moved libX* files from /usr/X11R6/lib dir to different dir.
i believe some of these libraries here come from Xfree86-data....rpm .


sure these libarries are required for any GUI installer to work. my sybase installer didn't work after this. i just have to figure out a way to include those libraries (may be LD_LIBRARY_PATH or somewhere)

anyway, i am all set now.


thx
AK