Strange boot problems.
Hi,
When I came to try and boot Linux today, I hit into a strange problem, which
I can't really understand, and am not sure how I managed to get Linux working
again. I apologise for the vagueness of some of the errors here.
As far as I am aware, this is what happened:
I turn the computer on, linux starts booting.
During the cleanup of /var/run, /var/lock, etc... something goes wrong - an
error code is returned. It fly's past the screen too fast for me to take it
down, and I don't know if it is relevant.
Here are some other problems which occur, which are listed in the logs and
seem relevant.
from lpr.log :
Dec 30 12:27:56 uchian lpd[440]: restarted
Dec 30 12:27:56 uchian lpd[440]: /var/run/lpd.pid: Input/output error
from kdm.log :
Fatal server error:
Can't read lock file /tmp/.X0-lock
The system goes to the console rather than to xwindows for login.
When I logged in, and tried to startx, I got an error about
$HOME/.Authority, and if I ran xauth, I got a problem about a lock file (in
var/lock).
Now comes some strangeness.
When I tried various commands, I would get unexpected errors, usually
relating to files in /usr/bin. For instance, I tried rebuilding the kernel,
and it stopped with an error whilst writing the System.map file, saying that
the sort command was not found. Rerunning 'make bzImage' a second time ran
through the process with no errors.
Another example, was when trying to view man pages - on first attempt, I
would get nothing but a list of error messages. By running man again, I got
the correct man page.
Around this point, I decided to try an old 2.2 kernel, to see if it made any
difference. I have lilo referencing /vmlinuz and /vmlinuz.old, which are
links to /boot/vmlinuz.2.4.16 and /boot/vmlinuz.2.4.12, the last two kernels
which I used.
I deleted the vmlinuz.old link, and tried to create a new link.
# ln /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.19pre17 vmlinuz.old
ln: creating hard link `vmlinuz.old' to `/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.19pre17': Invalid
cross-device link
I accidentally deleted the link to vmlinuz at this point, leaving me with no
valid kernels in lilo! I couldn't remake the links that used to exist, so in
desperation, I _copied_ the kernel image from the /boot/ sector (which is on
a tiny separate partition) into the root directory, and named it vmlinuz.
I rerun lilo, I rebooted my computer, and up pops xwindows...
Any of my kernels work as long as I copy them to the root directory, but I
can't link to them in /boot.
I still can't link vmlinuz and vmlinuz.old to my kernels in /boot/ and I have
no idea why they have suddenly stopped working. I don't understand the error
"Invalid cross-device link", and on google search I don't find many
references to it (and none of them have anything to do with booting the
kernel).
Can anyone shed any light on what's going on with my system, and how I should
fix it permanently?
Thanks to anyone who can help me,
Jason Wood
Reply to: