hanging at startup

[jaimin]

Hi all

I am new to Linux. I downloaded RedHat 7.1 ISO images and created the 2 CDs. I installed 'server' with all default options/packages. After it reboots at the end of installation, it displays message "Welcome to RedHat Linux. Press 'I' for interactive startup." At this point the only thing it shows is 'Mounting proc filesystem' and 'configuring kernel parameters' and then it just waits with a cursor blinking. I don't know what is it expecting.

If I press CTRL+C, it continues with the startup. However, it again waits at the stage of 'Starting System Logger'.

Please help

Thanks
Jaimin

[furrycat]

Could be it's waiting to do network stuff. Several dumb programs like sendmail expect you to be on the network and able to do DNS requests at startup. Once you get the system up you could try disabling networky things.

Then again it could be something completely different...

[jaimin]

Possibly. But I have tried waiting one full day (almost 24 hours) with no progress. Even if it is waiting for some networky stuff, I would assume that it would eventually time-out.

Another thing to note is that I don't even get any message. Is there any way I can start the boot process with extra debug/verbose info being displayed?

Jaimin

[furrycat]

Hehe, if you have to wait a day then something is wrong.

The usual solution in this type of situation is to start up by entering "linux init=/bin/bash" at the LILO prompt.

As you can guess, this skips the loading of init and dumps you at a shell prompt. Precisely NONE of the usual bootup fun will have taken place at this point. No filesystems other than root will be mounted, no scripts (like network setup or service startup) will have been run and you will be in single user mode.

From here you can play about to try to find out where it's all going horribly wrong. Have a poke about in the /etc/rc.d directory and run the scripts that usually run, in the order they usually run.

On Red Hat, this means running rc.S, then rc.sysinit (where you will notice the Mounting proc filesystem and Configuring kernel parameters stuff), then going into rc1.d and running all the scripts starting with S in the order they appear. The Starting System Logger message comes from syslog in this directory. After verifying that you can run all the scripts up until then you might try running it and seeing what happens.

[jaimin]

Ok, I tried booting with 'init=/bin/bash'. I switched to /etc/rc.d directory. I did not find any rc.S file. I did have a rc.sysinit which I tried running and it hung after displaying "Configuring kernel parameters: [OK]" message.

Now what should I do?

- Jaimin