Boot Hangs...New Kernel Compile Hangs...

[HippieJoe]

I am stumped...

This all started with a simple reboot...there wasn't even an update before break. It is a server up for long periods, no keyboard or monitor. I did a reboot, and the system never came back up...so I hooked up a monitor and keyboard to find the system hung indefinitely at: Starting local ...

There were also errors that no modules could be loaded for my nets, and ssh (so I am without a network while troubleshooting). The machine runs Linux sw raid1/5, lvm2, all reiserfs, no cdroms or floppys. I removed my nets, and ssh from the defaults run level...and the system continued to hang at starting local ... . So I removed local from the defaults and it just stopped at vixi-cron. I suspected a pattern so stopped removing things.

I can get to the maintenance login via ctrl-c as long as I get it before runlevel 3 (I think - or just into 3). I do have access to my entire filesystem. However, when I try to reboot from maintenance...it begins to unmount filesystems, but gets thrown into a very fast scrolling screen with tons of errors saying something about udev, unable to clear it??? It is real fast, and does this forever as well. Also, on boot, it replays my reiserfs volumes' journals saying they are not clean.

While researching this (boot hang) I found references to udev causing similar problems. The help suggested...removing the /dev/.udev folder. Adding udev to my kernel line in grub.conf. Recompiling the kernel. The first two had no affect at all. So I tried to recompile the same kernel I was using 2.6.17-r7. It hangs indefinitely at "CHK include/compile.h" Also I can not boot older kernels that used to work fine (why did I ever upgrade from these - I don't know???)

So I decided to try a newer version of the kernel 2.6.17-r8. I manually got the ebuild, the genpatches, and the extras file...put them all in their places, manually upgraded portage...and bam...same problem. So I tried the make with no previous .config file (hoping it was just some driver I had selected) - no go...same hang at compile.h. So I tried my make with a -d to dump the debug info. It is hung on compile.h (which I think this one file pretty much dictates the entire compile process). So I posted below the last ~25 lines from the debug before it hangs forever.

[NeddySeagoon]

HippieJoe,

It sounds very much like you did an update, then failed to run etc-update, so you have a set of new services with old/incompatible config files. It would all continue to work until services needed to be restarted. e.g. a reboot.

Run etc-update, look at each proposed change and consider the effect it will have.
Accepting all the updates can be as bad as not updating at all.

If you threw all the updates away, emerge baselayout to get essential system servoces onces again.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[HippieJoe]

Wow...thank you so much!!!

etc-update = 26 out dated files

That must have been accumulating for a while. Sure is a lesson learned for me. For 20 of the files, the replace old with update was fine. However, for the other 6 (ex, lvm.conf a big one) I couldn't quite grasb how the interactive merge worked. So I just made my own backups...and nano and I edited the updated ones to keep specific changes.

However, it is working now!!!

One other thing I got was on boot a warrning message: checkroot and checkroot.merged have circular dependenncies.

I think I can figure that out...seems self explanitory, but is that normal or was that an error on my part?

Well...thanks again!

HippieJoe