My dual boot (W2K/RH) RH 7.2 Linux system (running on an Acer Travelmate 630 laptop) no longer boots but hangs when it gets to starting the SENDMAIL process. I've changed to boot level one so I could see what (if anything) was happening and stop SENDMAIL from starting, but once I get the shell prompt I have no keyboard and can't type anything in! To make matters worse, W2K boots OK!!

What is also interesting, during a normal boot I attempted to enter the interactive boot process to skip the SENDMAIL process but although it echos the keyboard command it actually ignores the input and carries on booting as normal.

Any ideas why I have no keyboard any why SENDMAIL hangs?

sendmail is probably trying (and failing) to resolve its own hostname. If you simply leave it for a while, it will eventually give up and the boot process can continue.

Make sure you have your DNS configured correctly and that the machine can ping itself by name.

Regards

I had a feeling it would be something like that, but any idea just how long a while is ?

It seems that a "while" is somewhere in the region of fives minutes - so I was being a little impatient.

Once booted a quick bit of chkconfig put an end to sendmail and its problems. However, I still haven't discovered why it should suddenly start screwing me up!

I'd like to report I have similar problems and also wonder why it starts being a problem all of a sudden. There doesn't appear to be any provocation.