News Group Posts

Unixware boot errors

From: mschalit@pacbell.net (Matt Schalit)
Subject: Re: HELP!  Return value 12 - system will not boot.
References: <a021963f.0110111300.4ea3f46@posting.google.com>
<3bc638ba.20662846@news.sf.sbcglobal.net>
<a021963f.0110120417.6d7c189f@posting.google.com>
<3BC6E293.1CFBF6C5@aplawrence.com>
<a021963f.0110121026.69f5f350@posting.google.com>
<3bc74eb7.9695376@news.sf.sbcglobal.net>
<a021963f.0110150417.70b5e4f5@posting.google.com>
<3BCAF173.DD3BEE96@strhold.it>
<a021963f.0110150926.56fc1026@posting.google.com> 
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 20:36:04 GMT

On 15 Oct 2001 10:26:30 -0700, rables@thecommercegroup.com (Rob) wrote:

>Roberto Zini <r.zini@strhold.it> wrote in message news:<3BCAF173.DD3BEE96@strhold.it>...
>> Rob wrote:
>> > 
>> > mschalit@pacbell.net (Matt Schalit) wrote in message news:<3bc74eb7.9695376@news.sf.sbcglobal.net>...

>> > Matthew,
>> > 
>> > After typing
>> > 


Getting to the boot: prompt means that
you Master Boot Block, MBB, sector 0
on you hd has been successfully read and
has been told the active partition, which
has been found, whose secondary bootstrap
program has found the boot slice, /stand,
and loaded the raw data off there, which are
many .blm files, like stage3.blm.  Also
loaded is /stand/bootmsgs and /stand/boot,
and you see the boot: prompt.

>> > initstate=s
>> > boot


Ok.

 
>> > the system returned to the splash screen.
>> > 
>> > I get the copyright notice.
>> > 
>> > A system memory readout.


Apparently all the memory was found, too,
or you'd mention that, I figure...

 
>> > "The system is coming up, please wait".


Aha.  Your /stand/unix kernel has been successfully
loaded.  You have good kernel.


>> > A readout of the drives attached to my system.


  a.  Sysproc (as PID 0) loads, executes, and starts init.
      /root, /var are mounted for reading.

  b.  Init (as PID 1) executes, and reads inittab to set the initial 
      run level and mount filesystems.

The first three lines of inittab are:

   fr::sysinit:/sbin/fixroot >/dev/sysmsg 2>&1
   swp1::sysinit:/sbin/swap -a /dev/swap >/dev/sysmsg 2>&1
   cr::sysinit:/sbin/ckroot >/dev/sysmsg 2>&1

I don't know what fixroot does.
The swap line may be related to this output.

>> > A "NOTICE that my system RAM is larger than the dump device, so system
>> > dump will be selective" - I have always gotten this, even on my other
>> > system that has been up and running for 2 years.


That message, though, definitely goes away once your system
is patched with set71101i and a few other ptfs.


Finally, ckroot_vxfs(1M) gets run by that /sbin/ckroot
command, and reads /etc/vfstab to determine what to do about
the filesystems it's supposed to mount rw.

It's supposed to ckeck and clean ones that are marked
dirty.

>> > a "INFO: The system is being examined, this may take a few minutes."

 
>> > Then I get the error I have listed before:
>> > 
>> > UX:/sbin/ckroot:  WARNING: Return value 12
>> > UX:/sbin/ckroot:  INFO: system will reboot
>> > Press any key to restart


Comments below....


>> > All of the listed above happens within a matter of seconds.
>> > 
>> > Thanks for your help, anyone has has an idea, please let me know.
>> > 
>> > Thanks,
>> > 
>> > Rob
>> 
>> According to the man page, ckroot reads the mount options for
>> the root filesystem from the /etc/vfstab file; if the error
>> returned is coherent with the sys/errno.h file, 12 should
>> mean ENOMEM (not enough core ?).


Let's be clear on this for grins, man 2 intro:

 '12 ENOMEM Insufficient or invalid memory
     During execution of an exec, brk, or sbrk routine, 
     a program asks for more space than the system is able 
     to supply. This is not a temporary condition; the 
     maximum size is a system parameter. The error may also 
     occur if the arrangement of text, data, and stack 
     segments requires too many segmentation registers, or 
     if there is not enough swap space during the fork routine.
     ...'



>> Perhaps the /etc/vfstab file's got screwed up; 


That's the inidication, as it's possible that the
   swp1::sysinit:/sbin/swap -a /dev/swap >/dev/sysmsg 2>&1
command did not succesfully complete.  If so, then there
would be no swap space.



>> are you in the
>> position to boot from the emergency floppies set and check
>> that file (or even better, restore it from backup) ?
>> 
>> Best,
>> Roberto
>>
>Roberto,
>
>Thanks for the reply.  This is a new server, and I have not yet made
>the emergency repaid disks, nor any backups.  I still have another
>server I am running live on, but it has different hardware and
>filesystem setups.  Is there any other way to repair these files?
>
>Thanks again.
>
>Rob


  I'm don't know how to repair a damaged vfstab
file off the top of my head.  Anybody else know?

  To get access to the system, you can slap the
hard disk in the other Uw7 machine (as long as
the scsi id's don't clash), then fsck the slices.

  Perhaps you can't do that.  Another approach
would be to create a "Maigc Floppy."  You remeber
that one don't you?  It's the floppy disk that the
ISL instructions said you didn't need :)

  Use a Uw7 or Windoze mochine to create the diskette.
Mount the cdrom to /mnt, then cd to  /mnt/info/images
where you'll find the Magic image.  Then use the
two ISL diskettes to boot the broken uw7 machine like
you were going to do an ISL.  When the boot process
gets to the point where it asks you to load vendor
supplied HBA diskettes, load the Magic Floppy.  Then
swith to vt0 and you'll have a prompt where you can
chroot and use vi, fsck, and a few others.

  If you want to examine the contents of the Magic
Floppy before you try to use it, then you can mount
it on the other Uw7 machine.  It's an s5 filesystem:

   mount -F s5 /dev/fd0 /mnt

You'll run into a point where doing a lot of research
into this and fixing this (over the last few days
included) will cost more of your valuable time than 
a fresh install.

Good Luck,
Matt

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