init: hwclock main process terminated with status 2

[Tom H]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 11:50 AM, scott <redhowlingwolves at nc.rr.com> wrote:
> On 1/24/2011 11:49 AM, NoOp wrote:
>> On 01/23/2011 12:09 PM, scott wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't have a clue how this happened. I turned off my laptop, unplugged
>>> it and the next time I turned it on, the subject line is what I saw. It
>>> drops me to a maintenance shell.
>>>
>>> I've googled my butt off and everything I tried did not work. I've tried
>>> 'mountall start', 'init 2', I've tried setting the hwclock with 'hwclock
>>> --set --date xx/xx/xxxx'. I've fscked /dev/sda5 from a live cd, chrooted
>>> to it from the cd all to no avail.
>>>
>>> Even though I'm root in the shell, I can't mount the volume. I get
>>> permission denied. I've tried everything I can think of short of
>>> reinstalling. XP works fine from grub. Every kernel I try, I get the
>>> same thing, including the recovery options.
>>> Any ideas?
>>
>> Typically that erorr msg will accompany the actual error msg. For example:
>>     init: hwclock main process (nnn) terminated with status 2
>>     .: can't open /etc/default/rcS
>>     init: mountall main process (nnn) terminated with status 2
>>     filesystem check failed
>> That guy's problem was /etc/default/rcS.
>>
>> Post the entire output of the message, or take a photo of the screen &
>> post somewhere. Also, boot to a liveCD and take a look at your /var/log
>> files to see if you can spot any obvious error messages.
>>
>>
> I think it had to do with a missing mount point. In any case, I just
> reinstalled and kept my /home and everything is back to normal. I sure
> would like to know what caused it, though.

Glad you fixed the problem.

Meant to answer originally but deleted your email by mistake and forgot.

What I meant to say was that "/etc/init/hwclock.conf" has "start on
starting mountall" so your problem might very well be a mount problem
rather than a hwclock one.