On Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:40:01 +0100, Tim Nelson scribbled:
Greetings fellow Debian'ers-
I've got a system (Lenny, kernel 2.6.26-2-486)that occasionally
fails to
boot fully. The last item noted on the console is 'Activating Swap',
then nothing.
I've enabled bootlogd (/etc/default/bootlogd) and verbose mode
(/etc/default/rcS) but nothing of importance is shown. I've even
reinstalled Debian from scratch and the issue persists. I've tried
different hard drives, no change.
Now, here comes the odd part. If I remove the swap entry from fstab,
the
system will still hang at times! If there is no swap being made
available to the system, how can it still hang? Do the init scripts
look
for and use any partition with a swap partition type?
Also, is it possible the problem is soemthing else but it simply
manifests itself as a hang at the 'activating swap' part of the boot
process? I've extracted the Debian initrd and looked through the
scripts
there and in /etc/rcS* on the root partition. Nothing is jumping out
at
me for a possible cause.
How should I proceed to troubleshoot? Any ideas?
Thank you!
--Tim
I'd first verify that you are indeed running through the scripts of
/etc/
rcS.d and not rc3.d or the like.
Then, since you're seeing the hang whether or not there is a swap,
it's
likely what FOLLOWS checkroot.sh or mountall.sh. Add console messages
to
the scripts indicating you're exiting one and starting the next. Once
you find in which script your hang is located, comment the ^&%^% out
of
it to locate the command. Then follow your nose ;)