After selecting opensuse 12.1 from the GRUB menu the system fails to boot and eventually displays the message below:
" 127.629545] systemd-readahead-collect[353]: Failed to write pack file."
Prior to this there are various messages such as “fcsk succeeded…”, “Mounting root…”, “…recovering journal” and “systemd-fcsk[732]” but no further progress is made after the above message.
Could somebody please explain what the message means and suggest a resolution that will permit the system to boot as normal. Could any recovery be done with a live cd?
The system had been working normally for ~2 months and just before the error message had been copying a large data set from one usb drive to another over 4 to 5 days.
Any suggestions or comments appreciated.
On 2012-12-19 17:26, werahmrc wrote:
> Could somebody please explain what the message means and suggest a
> resolution that will permit the system to boot as normal. Could any
> recovery be done with a live cd?
>
I’m guessing that you have a filesystem or disk error. Perhaps booting
from a live CD and doing an fsck of the partitions would help.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Thank you for your response.
The system was booted from a live CD, the rescue option selected and fsck /dev/sda6 -f run as root but no errors were detected;fsck /dev/sda7 -f was also run but with the same result. Initially parted /dev/sda ‘print’ was executed to view the available partitions.
On restarting from the hard disk the system fails to boot and the original error is still displayed.
Any further comments or suggestions appreciated.
On 2012-12-20 17:56, werahmrc wrote:
>
> Thank you for your response.
>
> The system was booted from a live CD, the rescue option selected and
> fsck /dev/sda6 -f run as root but no errors were detected;fsck /dev/sda7
> -f was also run but with the same result. Initially parted /dev/sda
> ‘print’ was executed to view the available partitions.
>
> On restarting from the hard disk the system fails to boot and the
> original error is still displayed.
>
> Any further comments or suggestions appreciated.
Mmmm… :-?
Perhaps you are getting to the systemd emergency mode. Unfortunately
this mode gives very little, or none, info about what the real problem
is. Systemv is way more informative. I don’t know if you see at the
bottom of the grub screen a choice to press F5 or F6 to choose systemd
or systemv - if you do, try systemv.
If you don’t see that, perhaps you can get to the grub editor and change
the kernel line to have… yargh, I forgot the exact incantation, I
don’t have access to my desktop machine. Maybe someone else remembers, I
want to boot systemv by adding a call to the appropriate init.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Thank you for your response.
Pressing F5 at the grub menu allows system v to be selected and continuing gives access to the system in text mode after logging in.
Is there a specific recovery command that should be run at this point?
Best regards.
On 2012-12-21 13:26, werahmrc wrote:
>
> Thank you for your response.
>
> Pressing F5 at the grub menu allows system v to be selected and
> continuing gives access to the system in text mode after logging in.
>
Good.
> Is there a specific recovery command that should be run at this point?
Not yet. You have to look carefully at the text messages above the
prompt, and even above the screen border, the clue will be there. It
needs some experience to do that fast, but it can be done.
If you don’t see anything useful, post the text here. Or a photo.
Typical things are a not found partition, which means that you have to
edit fstab to correct it, or a partition that does not fsck.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
There are four messages that look like they may be problems, as follows:
-
At the top of the screen ‘Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key’
-
'httpd2-prefork: Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName.
-
'nxsensor is disabled in ‘/usr/NX/etc/node.cfg’
-
‘Failed services in runlevel 5: random mysql’
After this welcome to opensuse is displayed followed by the login prompt.
Finally, I will not have access to the laptop, with the boot failure problem, again until Monday January 7 so if it is convenient could we resume fault finding at that point?
Thank you again for you interest.
On 2012-12-21 18:26, werahmrc wrote:
>
> There are four messages that look like they may be problems, as follows:
>
> 1. At the top of the screen ‘Could not load host key:
> /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key’
>
> 2. 'httpd2-prefork: Could not reliably determine the server’s fully
> qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName.
>
> 3. 'nxsensor is disabled in ‘/usr/NX/etc/node.cfg’
>
> 4. ‘Failed services in runlevel 5:
> random mysql’
None of these add to something I can recognize… I’m baffled.
Is this some kind of server?
maybe someone else has more ideas…
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Thank you for your response.
Fortunately, or possibly unfortunately in the longer term, on Monday 7 January when I tried the system again it booted normally and now seems to be working correctly. Could closing it down in an orderly fashion from the terminal have rectified whatever was wrong?
The laptop was used to periodically send data gathered at a remote location back to a central point.
Best regards.
Improper shut down can leave a system in an undefined state. Forcing a proper shut down may correct the problem
Ok and thank you for your response.