stalled boot up process

[Rick Stevens]

On Mon, 2007-02-19 at 21:54 -0800, daisy wrote:
> My Red Hat linux system stalled one day and wouldn't allow any
> keyboard input.  We only use this machine as a web server and no one
> was using the machine at the time.  
>  
> We tried to reboot the machine but couldn't.  The boot up process just
> stops   The first time it stops at the following line,
>  
>    INIT: version 2.78 booting
>  
>  
> At the second and third attempt to boot, the set up process stopped
> at 
>  
>    Setting hostname  www.mycomputer.com
>  
>  
> The last time it stopped at the following (Pressing Y did not do
> anything.  Boot up is still stalled.)
>  
>    Initializing USB Controller (usb-uhci)
>    Your system appears to have shut down uncleanly
>    Press Y within X seconds to force file system integrity check.
>  
>  
> As shown the boot up process stops at different points.  Does anybody
> have any idea what the problem could be?  Hardward?  Software? I am
> sorry but I have no idea how to proceed, and would be grateful for any
> help.

The system seems to think that it got shut down by a power failure or
something of that nature.  Try booting again, but when you see the
"Press Y" prompt, press "Y".  The system will attempt to do an fsck on
your root drive (the one with the "/" filesystem).  If it finds badness
on the drive, it will try to repair it, but be warned that you may lose
some data if it finds the disk corrupted.

If pressing "Y" doesn't work, verify that the keyboard is functional.
Press the CAPS LOCK key and verify that the LED lights up.  If it
doesn't, then you may have a hardware problem.  It could be a bad
keyboard, a bad motherboard, bad memory or a bad power supply.  If the
keyboard works at the BIOS prompts and such, then I'd try to boot off
the first install CD and at the "boot:" prompt, enter "memtest86" to
test your memory.

If the memory passes the test, then I'd start looking at the power
supply.  If you know how to use a multimeter, check the power levels.
You'd be amazed at how flakey a system can get with a bad power supply.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-      Cuteness can be overcome through sufficient bastardry         -
-                                         --Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes   -
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