On saturday our Tivoli Backup Server which is running on Suse Linux 9 was having a couple of issues so I decided to reboot the server. Unfortunately the server got stuck whilst trying to sop the tivoli service so I was forced to do a hard shutdown.
Now when I try to boot the server the OS loads up to a point where it asks for the root login. Once I login it’s like the server is running barebones and I have to go into the Yast config to reinitialize the NIC so that I can actually ping it etc. I have to do this every time I reboot the server as well.
Unfortunately this is only the beginning of the problems, since after doing a ‘ps -a’ I realised that absolutely nothing seems to be running on the server, and the luns on the Fibre attached san won’t mount either which makes me think the drivers aren’t loading as well.
I’m pretty much a newbie at linux and over the last day or two I’ve been following red herring after red herring whilst not really making any progress. Can anyone please point me to any config files they think may help here? Any tips on what I should be looking out for? Thanks in advance.
On 07/30/2013 09:46 AM, medabrowski wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> On saturday our Tivoli Backup Server which is running on Suse Linux 9
> was having a couple of issues so I decided to reboot the server.
> Unfortunately the server got stuck whilst trying to sop the tivoli
> service so I was forced to do a hard shutdown.
> Now when I try to boot the server the OS loads up to a point where it
> asks for the root login. Once I login it’s like the server is running
> barebones and I have to go into the Yast config to reinitialize the NIC
> so that I can actually ping it etc. I have to do this every time I
> reboot the server as well.
> Unfortunately this is only the beginning of the problems, since after
> doing a ‘ps -a’ I realised that absolutely nothing seems to be running
> on the server, and the luns on the Fibre attached san won’t mount either
> which makes me think the drivers aren’t loading as well.
> I’m pretty much a newbie at linux and over the last day or two I’ve
> been following red herring after red herring whilst not really making
> any progress. Can anyone please point me to any config files they think
> may help here? Any tips on what I should be looking out for? Thanks in
> advance.
>
>
these are the openSUSE forums…unless the “Suse Linux 9” you have is
an enterprise level operating system with which you have service
contract with suse.de then you need to move to a supported version of
openSUSE…(which, from your description of what you have going on
there i would not advise is the way you need to go)
if you do have SUSE Linux Enterprise Server version 9 (aks SLES 9)
you need to go to their fourms <http://forums.suse.com/> or contact
them directly depending on which level of service you have arranged for…
the same ID/pass you used here works there…
if you are not sure exactly what operating system you have do this:
cat /etc/SuSE-release
note: (which i add since you wrote “I’m pretty much a newbie at
linux”) rebooting Linux is not normal procedure to try to ‘fix’ a
problem (despite it being the number one thing to ‘try’ on non-Linux
systems)
Like said above, your SuSE Linux 9 system hasn’t much to do with the openSUSE versions that are current these days. That is, no more then other Linux or even Unix systems maybe the best would be todays SLES and for that usr the link, et. DD points to). Thus consulting someone wo has some Unix/Linux knowledge in general from your neighbourhood might be the best way to find out what is wrong.
In any case te messages the system shows before it reverts to the root login you see (which is a fall back action because something realy went wrong). So try to get them and take notes (when there is a boot splash shown during boot, use the Esc key to see them.
dd wrote:
> On 07/30/2013 09:46 AM, medabrowski wrote:
>>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> On saturday our Tivoli Backup Server which is running on Suse Linux 9
>> was having a couple of issues so I decided to reboot the server.
>> Unfortunately the server got stuck whilst trying to sop the tivoli
>> service so I was forced to do a hard shutdown.
>> Now when I try to boot the server the OS loads up to a point where it
>> asks for the root login. Once I login it’s like the server is running
>> barebones and I have to go into the Yast config to reinitialize the NIC
>> so that I can actually ping it etc. I have to do this every time I
>> reboot the server as well.
It sounds like your server may have gone into rescue mode, most likely
because a filesystem has failed its integrity check.
You need to look at what text is shown before the login prompt. Ideally
cut and paste it somehow into the forum. Or failing that, take a photo
and paste that.
You might also want to look in the main system log file:
/var/log/messages
to see what there is there
> if you do have SUSE Linux Enterprise Server version 9 (aks SLES 9) you
> need to go to their fourms <http://forums.suse.com/> or contact them
> directly depending on which level of service you have arranged for…
As DD says, you may need to ask in a different forum, depending what
operating system you have.
On 2013-07-30 09:46, medabrowski wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> On saturday our Tivoli Backup Server which is running on Suse Linux 9
> was having a couple of issues so I decided to reboot the server.
Is that the paid for, enterprise version?
Or is that the free, gratis, version?
In the first case, wrong forum.
In the second case, obsolete system.
Please run and copy back here the result of:
cat /etc/SuSE*
> Unfortunately the server got stuck whilst trying to sop the tivoli
> service so I was forced to do a hard shutdown.
> Now when I try to boot the server the OS loads up to a point where it
> asks for the root login. Once I login it’s like the server is running
> barebones and I have to go into the Yast config to reinitialize the NIC
> so that I can actually ping it etc. I have to do this every time I
> reboot the server as well.
> Unfortunately this is only the beginning of the problems, since after
> doing a ‘ps -a’ I realised that absolutely nothing seems to be running
Are you sure you read the text in the screen? Does it not say something
about emergency mode or similar?
It is a minimal system where you have to solve the problem that caused
the emergency - trying to start services that are intentionally shut
down is absurd.
The most usual problem is a bad partition. Anything from a corrupted
filesystem, to a broken disk.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Firstly, sorry about posting in the wrong forum. Prime example of how much of a newbie I am at this.
Second, thanks very much Dave. Your tip about the /var/log/messages log helped me a great deal. Turns out it was an issue with the SAN as one of the controllers had gone offline, this was plainly shown in the log files you pointed me to. We sorted that out and restarted the TSM linux server so it could go through it’s normal boot procedure and everything is now working as before. Very happy camper now.
