malagoli@MHD.UCHICAGO.EDU (Andrea Malagoli) (06/06/89)
I have a Personal Iris and I have the following problem. I have nsf running and I usually hard mount some disks wich belong to other servers. I have installed the 3.1C upgrade (it was 3.1B before) and something got changed in such a way that the Iris is unable to communicate with the servers. Since it is trying to hard mount the disk, the Iris gets stuck while rebooting and I cannot modify the relevant files. Is there a way to reboot the machine in a standalone form, without starting the nfs daemons? Is there a solution to my problem. For example, on a Sun3 there is an option that allows to bring the system up in "single user mode". I have not been able to figure out how to do it on the Personal Iris. I will be very gratefull to anyone who can help me. Andrea Malagoli Astronomy Department University of Chicago E-mail: malagoli@mhd.uchicago.edu
goss@SNOW-WHITE.MERIT-TECH.COM (Mike Goss) (06/06/89)
Regarding the message from Andrea Malagoli: > I have a Personal Iris and I have the following problem. > I have nsf running and I usually hard mount some disks > wich belong to other servers. I have installed the 3.1C > upgrade (it was 3.1B before) and something got changed > in such a way that the Iris is unable to communicate > with the servers. Since it is trying to hard mount the > disk, the Iris gets stuck while rebooting and I cannot > modify the relevant files. We had this same problem, and fixed it by simply adding the parameter "bg" to the parameters for the nfs file systems in /etc/fstab. This tells mount that if it cannot mount an nfs file system on the first try, to put the mount in the background waiting for the file system to become available, and then continue with the boot. Mike Goss Merit Technology Inc.
goss@SNOW-WHITE.MERIT-TECH.COM (Mike Goss) (06/06/89)
> My question now is: > > How can I access the /etc/fstab file if the machine refuses > to reboot? Can I access it from the miniroot? > > Andrea Malagoli > > University of Chicago. To get into single user mode on a Personal Iris, the following arcane procedure is necessary: During system boot, you will get a message on the screen that says something like "Starting system, type ESC for maintenance mode" Hit the ESC key. You will see a menu with several choices. Type "5" to select the "Command Monitor". Enter the command: setenv initstate s This tells the system to boot to single user mode on the next boot. Exit the command monitor with a ^D (control-D) to get back to the maintenance menu, then select "1" (start sytem). This should get you into single user mode. You can then edit /etc/fstab to fix your nfs problems, after which you should reboot the system to get back to normal, multi-user mode. Mike Goss Merit Technology Inc.
fsfacca@LERC08.NAS.NASA.GOV (Tony Facca) (06/07/89)
Andrea Malagoli <malagoli%mhd.uchicago.edu@oddjob.uchicago.edu> writes: > I have a Personal Iris and I have the following problem. > I have nsf running and I usually hard mount some disks > wich belong to other servers. I have installed the 3.1C > upgrade (it was 3.1B before) and something got changed [ stuff deleted ] > Is there a way to reboot the machine in a standalone > form, without starting the nfs daemons? Is there a > solution to my problem. For example, on a Sun3 there > is an option that allows to bring the system up in > "single user mode". I have not been able to figure > out how to do it on the Personal Iris. A couple of things that may (or may not) help. - to boot the machine without starting the NFS daemons, try doing "/etc/chkconfig nfs no" "/etc/reboot" when you want NFS to come back, you'll have to do /etc/chkconfig nfs yes - to boot the machine in single user mode, you can edit the /etc/inittab file and change the line which reads: is:2:initdefault to is:s:initdefault which will cause the machine to always come up in single user mode. Or, just do "/etc/init s" to bring the system down to Single User Mode. Also, please follow up with what has changed in NFS. We are using it pretty extensively, and I am interested in any anomolies which show up in NFS. By the way, since we are talking about NFS, I found out an interesting thing last week. We started using a name server to resolve addresses and several of the machines in /etc/exports are on a different network than the local machine. When the NFS part of the startup script runs, it came up with "cannot export to hostname" errors. What I needed to do was specify each hostnames full domain name, not just the alias. That's because the NFS part of the script runs before the routers. Hmmm. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Facca | phone: 216-433-8318 NASA Lewis Research Center | Cleveland, Ohio 44135 | email: fsfacca@lerc08.nas.nasa.gov -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
wiltse@oceana.sgi.com (Wiltse Carpenter) (06/07/89)
In article <8906052212.AA11465@mhd.uchicago.edu>, malagoli@MHD.UCHICAGO.EDU (Andrea Malagoli) writes: > > Is there a way to reboot the machine in a standalone > form, without starting the nfs daemons? Is there a > solution to my problem. For example, on a Sun3 there > is an option that allows to bring the system up in > "single user mode". Yes there is a solution! Here's how to bring the system up in "single user mode": Press reset to get to the "Starting up system press...To perform system maintenance instead, press <Esc>". Quickly press the Esc key. You should see a menu with five items on it, the last of which says "Manual Mode". Press 5 to get into manual mode. You should get a >> prompt. Type "setenv initstate s" and then Enter. Then type "auto" at the next prompt. The system should come up in single user mode. To use vi in single user mode, TERM should be set to "iris-tp" and LINES should be set to "40". The easiest way to get the system working again might be to type "chkconfig nfs off" which will disable nfs. You can bring the system the rest of the way up by typing "multi". Here's some suggestions on how to avoid this problem altogether. If you like to hard mount nfs directories (I know I do), and they are not absolutely critical to the operation of your machine (i.e. you're not mounting /bin with nfs), then be sure and use the "bg" attribute on the /etc/fstab entry for the filesystem. For example, my fstab has a line in it like this: # Remote source tree theserver:/thesource /thesource nfs bg If for some reason the server machine is down, or my networking isn't working, my system will still boot and keep trying to mount /thesource in the background. -Wiltse