'machine check while in PAL mode'?
I was upgrading my Alpha (LX164) to the latest potato packages this
evening and got the following message:
===begin===
(Reading database ... 18270 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace sysvinit 2.78-1 (using .../sysvinit_2.78-2_alpha.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement sysvinit ...
Setting up sysvinit (2.78-2) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountall.sh ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/mountnfs.sh ...
halted CPU 0
halt code = 7
machine check while in PAL mode
PC = 18400
===endit===
and dropped down to the SRM console.
Anybody got any idea what this might be caused by?
(For reference, on bootup, aboot says:
aboot: Linux/Alpha SRM bootloader version 0.5
aboot: switching to OSF/1 PALcode version 1.22)
I then get
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/init.d/rc"
(!)
[ls shows it's mode 644.]
This of course means / was mounted read-only and all
sorts of things are hideously broken...
On running fsck the filesystem appears to have mangled itself
in a spectacular fashion. In particular, it seems to have
nuked /var/lib/dpkg/status (lots of trailing NULs) and
/var/lib/dpkg/available (dpkg complains:
dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 2
package `telnet': value for `status' field not allowed in this context
and won't do anything useful.)
I'm inclined to reinstall from scratch at this point :-<
(I hadn't got round to putting anything useful on the box...)
Peter Maydell
Reply to: