I hope someone can please help me!
My computer died last night, no apparent reason, it was working fine one minute then pop, dead. No noise or anything, just a constantly on HDD light and the fans went from their idle speed to full speed. If I plug a monitor into it, it says “no signal”. A reboot and it doesn’t even get the BIOS screen.
I took the two HDDs out of the machine and plugged them into another PC (aka “computer 2” - basically a spare chassis just with no HDD).
Although “computer 2” starts to boot OK, it seems to fail to find a configuration for the ethernet card (ETH1) saying “no configuration” and then says it is “waiting for ETH0”. It then times out and continues booting up to the point where it tries to initialise XINETD (sorry if that’s not spelled correctly, INETXD or something).
At this point, despite saying “done”, I don’t get a login or anything (it should start in INIT 3). If i hit the power button, the system shuts down normally, terminates services and goes through the correct INIT 0 procedure - likewise, if i hit control-alt-delete, it runs procedures for INIT 6 and reboots the machine.
Is there a way of performing a “selective boot” so I am prompted to start or skip each service? If so, how?! I can then skip XINETD and it should allow me in to fix.
Please help, this is my webserver, nagios monitor and email server, most of which was backed up but there are things on there which were not 
Try init 2 – with no networking.
Would love to be able to try but as it boots I get two options
Start Suse 11.0
Failsafe mode
Doesn’t matter which I choose, both do the same and I’m still left “frozen” at the same place
How would I over-ride the default boot level without a working system? Would I boot a LiveCD then tell it to
su -c “init 2”
?
badger fruit adjusted his/her AFDB on Thursday 06 Aug 2009 11:06 to write:
> IS THERE A WAY OF PERFORMING A “SELECTIVE BOOT” SO I AM PROMPTED TO
> START OR SKIP EACH SERVICE? IF SO, HOW?! I CAN THEN SKIP XINETD AND IT
> SHOULD ALLOW ME IN TO FIX.
>
> Please help, this is my webserver, nagios monitor and email server,
> most of which was backed up but there are things on there which were not
>
>
>
What happens if you start in init 1:
When you get the grub boot screen select failsafe and add:
init 1
This is a super super login which might just ask for the root pass with
hardly any services running at all, see if that helps or why not use the
install CD/DVD to do a repair?
HTH
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum
Sorry baskitcaise, I’d added my reply at the same time as you were writing - my response above was to Lazy_Kent.
I shall try adding “init 3” or “init 1” to the failsafe options (i did not know you could do this!) and see what happens. The machine is at home and I am at work so will nip home at lunchtime and see what happens!
Thank you both for your suggestions to a total noob (i’ve run suse for a year or so now and still barely know most useful things lol!)
When a grub menu appears stay at openSUSE and press 2.
Hello there, just an update to say it is now back up and running!
Init 2 did not work but init 1 allowed me to go into Yast2 and delete all the NIC configurations and re-create. A quickl reboot later and everything’s back up and running as it once was.
All I will say is “PHEW!” and to EVERYONE reading this, BACKUP YOUR SYSTEM!!! DO IT NOW!!
Thanks guys for your suggestions, will bear the different init levels in mind in case anything like this happens again!
Rich