8.5. What do I do when the machine hangs at the boot message?
Description
This article is from the 3b1 computers FAQ, by John B. Bunch with numerous contributions by others.
8.5. What do I do when the machine hangs at the boot message?
Version #.##x Real memory = ####### Available memory = ####### Main board is ####
9 times out of 10 the /etc/inittab file is either deleted, corrupted, or truncated because of some filesystem damage during a system crash.
The machine will hang there at that Main board prompt forever since /etc/init is looking for the inittab file. This is where it is handy to have a floppy filesystem disk with saved copy of /etc/inittab on it. Boot the system using the "Floppy Boot Disk" (Disk 2 of ##), then insert your copy when it asks for the Floppy Filesystem Disk. Interrupt the script with <DEL> to get a "#" prompt when the first question appears. On your floppy, if you followed the previous advice, is /etc/inittab.save, which can be happily copied to the /mnt/etc/inittab file when the hard disk root filesystem (/dev/fp002) is mounted from the floppy as /mnt.
# umount /dev/fp002 # fsck -s /dev/rfp002 # mount /dev/fp002 /mnt # ls -l /mnt/etc/inittab
If the file isn't there, or is corrupted:
# cp /etc/inittab.save /mnt/etc/inittab # sync # umount /dev/fp002 # sync # sync # reboot
The other one time (out of 10), the /etc/inittab file is okay but there is a /etc/utmp.lck file on the system. This happens in very rare race conditions involving the pututent(3C) routines. Removing this file and rebooting will generally recover the system.
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