Hello,
Thanks for the responses, Jeffery and Phil. Unfortunately I still
haven't got to the root of the problem but I'll keep you posted,
Jeffery, and let you know if I get it sorted out. I went back to the
archive to read your posting to see how your problem got started. Were you
upgrading or doing a fresh install?
Phil, the sources that you pointed us towards for help in
trying to get to grips with what might be causing the "respawning too fast
etc" error all pointed to problems calling getty or with getty after it is
called. That is direction that searching on dejanews pointed me to also
so before posting I had compared my /etc/inittab files on my working and "broken"
installations to see if size and permissions were the same. I
did a line-by-line comparison of /etc/inittab and couldn't
see any differences.
The Bootdisk Howto was particularly useful and I did
some further checking based on the troubleshooting section but still
cannot boot from the 2.0.36 kernel on hda6. I checked that ldd /sbin/init
points to the same library on both hda6 and hdb3 and rechecked that
/sbin/init.d/boot and /sbin/swapon were both executable.
Based on this and the fact that I was unable to execute an ld -V
commands from my bash shell immediately after I installed the rpms (before
I rebooted) suggests to me that installing the rpms had
*corrupted* my bash shell or deleted some frequently used library. The
warning about the conflict with ansidecl.h that is contained in the
installation log (see below) has me thinking/hoping that if I could
undo the installation of the binutils and util rpm and reinstall the
earlier versions from my cd that I might be able to get my system
working again.
Anyone know if it is possible to use YaST to uninstall rpms from a
mounted but not / partition? When I boot to my hda6 partition in rescue
mode (linux single) it is mounted read-only so I cannot run YaST. When
I boot to hdb3 and mount hda6 on mnt/hda6 YaST naturally enough only
wants to install/uninstall packages from /dev//hdb3. Is there a way
around this catch-22 situation?
Thanks for any suggestions. I'm leaving the full text of the earlier
postings attached to provide context for anyone who feels they might be
able to help. It makes for a long posting.
Jesse McDonnell
On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Jeffery S. Norman wrote:
>
> Looks very similar to the error I was getting (spawning too fast ...)
>
> Let me know if you get it corrected.
>
> I am very close to wiping my install and starting from scratch.
>
> So much for upgradeability (which was, after all, the only reason that I
> use SuSE!)
>
> Jesse McDonnell wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I hope someone will be able to help me with a system that
> > will not boot. I've searched the SuSE Knowledge Base but haven't found
> > any pointers. I have LiLO installed on the MBR of hda.
> > My SuSE 5.1, kernel 2.0.36 system is installed on hda6.
> > After uncompressing the kernel, identifying the hardware,
> > and reading /etc/fstab the boot process starts passing
> > multiple error messages. Most scroll by too quickly to read
> > but they begin with:
> >
> > "starting sbin/init.d/boot:starting /sbin/swapon:
> > no such file or directory"
> >
> > After mounting hda6 read-only
> > the boot hangs permanently at:
> >
> > "INIT: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for five minutes"
> > :
> > :
> > "INIT: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for five minutes"
> > Powering down is the only way out of the situation.
> >
> > Fortunately, I didn't wipe my installation (now on hdb) when I
> > upgraded my main hard drive some months ago so after booting from
> > a rescue disk I was able to edit /etc/conf.lilo and I'm now
> > booting to my 2.0.33 system on hdb3.
> >
> > My setup:
> >
> > SuSE 5.1 kernel 2.0.36 on hda6(W95 on hda1)
> > SuSE 5.1 kernel 2.0.33 on hdb3(W95 on hdb1)
> > YaST .97.1 (correction: should be .79.1)
> > gcc 2.7.2.1
> >
> > Everything was working fine until...
> > In preparation for upgrading to kernel 2.2.1,I decided
> > to install the required versions of the various utilities/programs
> > needed by 2.2.1.
> >
> > Not finding the most recent versions in the various
> > SuSE 5.3 directories, (that should have caused me to
> > stop right there!), I downloaded and installed rpms
> > for kernmod, ppp, binutils,libc5.4.46-2.i386,
> > net-tools, sh-utils, sh-libs from the 6.0 and 6.0
> > evaluation directories.
> >
> > YaST issued warnings about conflicts for the binutils and the
> > sh-utils package but I continued to install.
> > (I know, I know .... I've been kicking myself since then.)
> >
> > The warnings were:
> >
> > "/usr/include/ansidecl.h conflicts with file from libc-5.4.33-6"
> > and a few other warnings related to man pages and etc/ppp/options
> > and etc/ppp/pap-secrets. I'm assuming these latter warnings aren't
> > directly related to my booting problem.
> >
> > In some (but not all) cases YaST prompted me
> > to save backups to /var/adm/backup/installation-990217.0
> > I've attached this file in the hope that someone can point me to
> > the steps to take to rescue my system.
> >
> > Initially I thought that the problem was
> > directly caused by using SuSE 6.0 rpms in a SuSE 5.1
> > system - the utilities/libaries might be installed
> > in different directories in 6.0.
> > >From searching in dejanews and being
> > able to read more of the error messages I get when
> > trying to boot it seems that the problem may be a
> > result of my bash shell becoming *corrupted* in some
> > way (maybe by using SuSE 6.0 rpms in a SuSE 5.1 system).
> > Immediately after installing the packages and before
> > I rebooted I got a number of "no such file or directory"
> > error messages when I tried ld -V from the command line
> >
> > How can I fix the *corrupted* bash shell on my main system
> > on hda6, if that is, indeed, the problem? I've compared
> > permissions and file sizes for bin/sh, bash, /etc/inittab
> > between the working system on hdb3 and the *corrupted*
> > hda6 and cannot see anything amiss. Of course, that doesn't
> > mean it is not staring me in the face!
> >
> > Can I use YaST from hdb3 to uninstall packages on hdb6
> > or to otherwise fix the system? I mounted /dev/hda6 read-write
> > but couldn't run YaST from it.
> > If not, is there any way to get back my thrashed configuration
> > without reinstalling everything?
> > Since adding a new hard drive six months ago,
> > I have added a lot of programs - leafnode & knews
> > (a great combination), the alsa-driver and utilities,
> > XFmail, xforms, x-cd-roast, netscape 3.04 and
> > rvplayer 5.0 being the main ones.
> > If at all possible, I'd like to save my system.
> >
> > I'm including the /var/adm/backup/installation-990217.0 file.
> > Please excuse the lenght of this post.
> > Thanks for reading this far and any suggestions/help you can offer.
> >
> > Jesse McDonnell
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > ***start of /var/adm/backup/installation-990217.0***
> >
> > pkgtools ##################################################
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > /usr/include/ansidecl.h conflicts with file from libc-5.4.33-6
> > error: /root/SuSE221update/binutils.rpm cannot be installed
> > Force replacement of files ...
> > binutils ##################################################
> > ... With warning
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> > With warning: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup/libc-990217-0.tgz
> > usr/include/ansidecl.h
> > libc ##################################################
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > net_tool ##################################################
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > sh_utils ##################################################
> > package /usr/man/man1/users.1.gz not found in file index
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > shlibs ##################################################
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > /usr/man/man5/fstab.5.gz conflicts with file from ldpman-1.18-0
> > /usr/man/man5/nfs.5.gz conflicts with file from ldpman-1.18-0
> > error: /root/SuSE221update/util.rpm cannot be installed
> > Force replacement of files ...
> > util ##################################################
> > ... With warning
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> > With warning: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup/kernmod-990218-0.tgz
> > lib/modules/2.0.33/modules.dep
> > kernmod ##################################################
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup
> >
> > Backup: /var/adm/backup/ppp-990218-0.tgz
> > etc/ppp/options
> > etc/ppp/pap-secrets
> > ppp ##################################################
> > warning: /etc/ppp/options saved as /etc/ppp/options.rpmsave
> > warning: /etc/ppp/pap-secrets saved as /etc/ppp/pap-secrets.rpmsave
> >
> > Totally installed: 1
> >
> > INSTALLATION COMPLETE.
> >
> > ***end of /var/adm/backup/installation-990217.0***
> >
> > -
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> > archive at http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html
>
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