schinder@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Paul Schinder) (08/01/90)
[While I'm waiting for a phone call from IBM, I thought I might try here] We have a PowerStation 320, running AIX 3.1, which started acting up last night by refusing to boot, and the console remains dark with no information. The initial reboot was done by a "shutdown -r"; when I realized later that the machine hadn't rebooted, I found it showing a three digit code "c99". After several attempts to boot it, I loaded standalone diagnostics from the floppies. The hardware all checked out. Now when we try to boot it, the code is "553", which according to a previous phone call from IBM means the inittab file is bad. (Neither "c99" or "553" is in any of the documentation we have). We have AIX on tape, but unfortunately our tape drive hasn't arrived yet. We don't have AIX floppies. So there seems to be no other way for us to boot AIX except from the preinstalled version on the hard disk. The man pages I've read seem to indicate that if booted in maintainence mode, the inittab is ignored, but they don't say how to boot in maintainence mode. So *is* there an equivalent of single user mode on these machines? How do you get it to come up that way? And why is the console off so far into the boot; how can you tell how the boot in going if the console doesn't display any messages? -- Paul J. Schinder Department of Astronomy, Cornell University schinder@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan &) (08/10/90)
In article <10600@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> schinder@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Paul Schinder) writes:
Paul> [While I'm waiting for a phone call from IBM, I thought I might
Paul> try here]
Paul> We have a PowerStation 320, running AIX 3.1, which started acting up
Paul> last night by refusing to boot, and the console remains dark with no
Paul> information. The initial reboot was done by a "shutdown -r"; when I
Paul> realized later that the machine hadn't rebooted, I found it showing a
Paul> three digit code "c99". After several attempts to boot it, I loaded
Paul> standalone diagnostics from the floppies. The hardware all checked
Paul> out. Now when we try to boot it, the code is "553", which according
Paul> to a previous phone call from IBM means the inittab file is bad.
Paul> (Neither "c99" or "553" is in any of the documentation we have).
Paul> We have AIX on tape, but unfortunately our tape drive hasn't arrived
Paul> yet. We don't have AIX floppies. So there seems to be no other way
Paul> for us to boot AIX except from the preinstalled version on the hard
Paul> disk. The man pages I've read seem to indicate that if booted in
Paul> maintainence mode, the inittab is ignored, but they don't say how
Paul> to boot in maintainence mode.
Paul> So *is* there an equivalent of single user mode on these machines?
Paul> How do you get it to come up that way? And why is the console off so
Paul> far into the boot; how can you tell how the boot in going if the
Paul> console doesn't display any messages?
Did you get an answer from IBM? I asked my SE the same question and did not
really get an answer.
Do you have the installation floppies? I vaguely remember something like
the following: You boot up the floppies as if you were going to install from
tape. When you get to the first menu you drop into a shell. Then run
/etc/continue. It is not quite 'single user' in the real UNIX sense. I
think that you are still running out of the memory resident version of the /
file system at this point. Not sure if you can mount your file systems,
etc.
--
Dan Ehrlich <ehrlich@cs.psu.edu>/Voice: +1 814 863 1142/FAX: +1 814 865 3176