Boot problem

[Tod Merley]

On 3/21/06, Juan Carlos Reyes <jcreyesortiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Tod,
> Bad news hunting
>
> Mi computer is a clone ADM Athlon 1000 with 512 RAM. I installed Ubuntu
> 5.1. First I updated the Applications -Music & Movies- following
> instructions of help.ubuntu.com <http://hel.ubuntu.com> -index you send me
> by mail-. Then I try ed to install Java, but I'm not sure if it was
> successful. Then, I updated almost seventy something new updates, that
> Ubuntu asked me if I wanted to install, I never realized what were those, I
> just tough that it was good to update them if it was proposed.
>
> I wasn't very patient so I restarted again. Sorry, after some days working
> perfectly a new boot problem apeared. I had reinstalled all those, but also
> amule & lyx.
>
> Now, it surpass the last blockage but stops here:
>
> ...fail! system log daemon... d: command not found not found
> *Starting kernel log daemon
> /etc/rc2.d/sllklog d: line 60: mkfifo: command not found
> ... done
>
> I have tryed  CONTROL+C but nothing new.
>
> Thank you for youre help!
>
>
>
>
> Hi again Juan!

Knowing the processor and that it is a clone is a place to start I suppose.
This is still very little information to go on.

My first instinct is that the computer CMOS is flaky due to a bad battery.
The fact that it works, and then does not work, and then works different yet
is kind of leading me that way.  I had one computer where I reset the CMOS
to the defaults and set a few critical parameters (I was running one
processor on a two processor machine and I needed to tell it that) if I left
the computer off for more than a day.  I finally did replace the battery but
it was months before I actually got to it.

On the hardware side we may also be dealing with flaky power, a flaky hard
drive, or flaky memory.  We may be dealing with some sort of actual hardware
problem - just keep this in mind.

If you are able to boot into rescue mode (see link):

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/system_administration_books/ubuntu_starter_guide/ch08.html

Look in a directory called /var/log (ok, I am in FC5 now it may be different
in Ubuntu - do an "updatedb" as sudo (use "sudo -s" to be "root" (sudo)) and
then "locate log" to find the log directories would probably work)  Anyway
there you should also find a file called "messages" filled with stuff that
may give a clue, possibly one called "boot" and one called "demsg" whose
"tail" may well tell the tale. I am really not as familiar with all of these
as I would like to be and am glad that you pointed me back to this to
learn.  I will be googling these file names with Linux as a first and/or
second key and adding info as a third.

I am tending more and more to install fresh rather than update.  Open Source
has a lot of branches in it's software trees and they kind of tend to tangle
up.  The release times (or very shortly thereafter) are about as good as it
gets for things running well together and media makes a lot of things have
to work together.  This may be a good time to back up your projects and do a
fresh load.

When troubleshooting you need to separate what is working and what is not.
Try to update (if you continue to update) doing an area at a time if
possible.  If you are adding software, plan the loads so that you can test
things as you go.

Sounds like the hunt hit a storm.

Let us learn!

Tod
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20060323/8bfa02d1/attachment.html>