anyone having any problems with AC?

[Robert M. Riches Jr.]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 01:26:41PM -0400, bob smith wrote:
> My DS10 has been running since july, had to reboot, and it now hangs at 
> start up
> with something like
>
> Starting Named           
> and hangs for days.
>
> any hints? I don't want to jump to conclusion that it is something with 
> drive, but it sure looks like it.
>
> One indicator is with AC2, the box lost the x stuff - so the screen would 
> just hang when turning on the
> screen, could not get it to respond, had to ssh in to get at the box, 
> rebuilt it and did not use
> X, it ran for a good while, now after this july install, it just crapped 
> out on reboot.
>
> thanks!
> bob

I haven't booted my Alpha machine in a few years, but here
are a couple of ideas that might help:

Has the 'bind' package been updated since your last boot?
If so, that might have introduced a problem that only showed
up when you tried to boot the machine.

Is your network up and working when named tries to start?
If not, fixing that might help.

Can AC2 or any newer Alpha Linux releases be run as a
live-CD?  If so, boot to it and poke around log files, etc.

Can you boot an installation CD/DVD and get a root shell?  I
seem to recall it was something like F2 or Alt-F2 or
Alt-Ctrl-F2 in old Redhat releases.  If so, poke around the
log files, etc.  (Just don't format the disks.)

When I had only a single Alpha machine at home, I would put
three Linux installations on two physical disk drives.  Two
of them were standalone installations to a single partition
on each disk.  One was split up among several partitions.
If one installation failed, I could boot one of the others.

I'll try to attach a script I used (might need to be
modified to run on Alpha again) to verify the contents of my
RPMs and the files they own.  I used it before and after
each package update or other system maintenance operation.
I compared the output from the previous run with the output
of the current run to verify that nothing changed that
wasn't supposed to.  (You'll probably want to change the
osversion string.)

HTH

Robert Riches
rm.riches at verizon.net
-------------- next part --------------
#!/bin/csh -f

# C-shell script to gather RPM information for use in system update
# and system integrity checking.  This script must be run as root.

# The following should be updated when installing new OS versions.
set osversion = 'md2008'

if ( "" == "$1" ) then
  echo "usage: getrpminfo date-plus (yy.mm.ddx, x E { a, b, c, ...})"
  exit(1)
endif

set qfile = $osversion.$1.q
set vfile = $osversion.$1.v

if ( -e $qfile ) then
  echo "Output file already exists: $qfile"
  exit(1)
endif

echo "Putting RPM info in file $qfile"
echo "             and in file $vfile"
echo -n "Start time: "
date

setenv LC_COLLATE C
rpm -qa | sort > $qfile
if ( -e $vfile ) then
  rm $vfile
endif
touch $vfile
foreach pkg (`cat $qfile`)
  echo 'vvvvvvvv '$pkg' vvvvvvvv' >> $vfile
  rpm -V $pkg >> $vfile
  echo '^^^^^^^^ '$pkg' ^^^^^^^^' >> $vfile
end

echo -n "Finish time: "
date