Hello.

First of all, I want to mention that I am effectively totally new to the Linux world. My work in computational chemistry has, up to this point, been done on Windows and OS X. But, as I have been told, to be a "grown-up" in computational chemistry, you should be good at Linux/UNIX, and should be knowledgeable in some form of programming. Alas.

The following is a description of my problem:

Upon initiation of the computer, the boot-up process progresses to the Red Hat Enterprise splash screen displaying a progress bar. The progress bar makes it to its "100%" state, but the boot-up process does not continue. I have let it idle in that state for over an hour, and there is no progress. Upon a key-stroke like DEL or any of the function keys, I am shown a shell-like environment which displays text communicating something to the effect of "readahead-SOMETHING" not found.

This problem occurred after at restart after two things I did. One of the things was, and I am sure I did this wrong, create a directory (mkdir abinit, note: not mkdir /abinit) for a computational program I needed to install, which should be at the root level; I then needed to remove the directory. The second was an attempt to change the partition size to include all 8 TB of disk space. This failed with an error I do not quite recall.

Please let me know what might be done. I am prepared to reformat the machine, but it would be nice if I didn't have to.

Thanks.

Removing only the "abinit" directory should not cause errors. But if with "root level" you mean being logged in as root then you should tread carefully. Root is the one omnipotent user account whose actions can be lethal to a system. (Think J. R. Oppenheimer as he said "Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.")


Depends on how you performed it. Ext3/Ext4 may (or may not) allow for online resizing so such ops I prefer to do booting a distribution installer or a Live CD like Gparted or KNOPPIX. While diagnostics are possible it's always good to save, screencap or jot down errors you encounter especially if they're unlikely to have been stored in the log files.


AFAIK missing readahead-early should not stop the machine from booting up completely. Must be more than that. If you reboot, being at the GRUB prompt, you should be able to (temporarily: won't survive a reboot) edit your configuration. To the "kernel" line at the end add a space and the number 1. This should make it boot into runlevel one (single user, no network) where you can read log files, perform maintenance or recovery.

* Unless your company or institution provided you with a RHEL license I would suggest you research which applications you need to run and master before you continue. If most packages are distro-agnostic then you should feel free to choose whichever distribution that appeals to you. If you want to stay close to RHEL you could go for Centos or Scientific Linux or Fedora (for day to day use it's really not as b0rken as some will have you believe). While learning to troubleshoot a system can be a nice pastime it may be more interesting right now to install anew, learn how to make backups and just see if working with Linux has its advantages for you.

1 members found this post helpful.

to add to unSpawn
that folder you put on /
" /abinit " will give SELinux a fit ( a nasty temper tantrum )

if the security context is not right se will block the booting of the system

the same thing goes for having the wrong file permissions on / or in your HOME folder

Red hat and REHL type of operating systems DO NOT like folders created on /

now RHEL 6 is NOT a free operating system
you MUST have a paid for support contract
( no if's and's or but's - to use RHEL you have to buy one)

there ARE free rebuilds
CEntOS 6 and Scientific Linux 6


also RHEL is not that great for a home system
IT IS GREAT for getting WORK DONE

That is why i run OpenSUSE 11.4 AND ScientificLinux6

there are a BUNCH of Astronomy ( same for chemistry) programs that need RHEL and will NOT work on OpenSUSE

and visa/versa there are programs that will NOT run on RHEL6 but do on suse,Fedora,Ubuntu ,...


Also get OUT OF THE HABIT ( yes in CAP) of loging in as root
don't

once in a while as needed is one thing but most will tell you NEVER

use a normal user account !!!!!!!!!
then as needed start nautilus ( gnome2) or konqueror ( KDE4) as root in the terminal if you need a gui

Thanks for the information so far.

To address the RH license:

The license was purchased through the university as a preference for use of Gaussian and AMPAC, as well as other computational chemical programs.

I will re-format and start anew. I will pay more attention to backing up.

RHEL License. Cool.

From the "Learning the Linux Command Line" link collection (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nd-line-32893/) here's some guides a new Linux user should read:
Linux Documentation Project
Rute Tutorial & Exposition
Linux Command Guide
Bash Beginners Guide
Linux Newbie Admin Guide
LinuxSelfHelp
Utimate Linux Newbie Guide
Linux Home Networking
...and of course RHEL provides copious documentation at docs.redhat.com.

* Note this doesn't mean you never have to ask questions again and it isn't meant as RTFM either but it should strengthen your self-reliance which IMHO always is a Good Thing.

a good stop is the red hat knowledge base
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/search

but to read the output you need to login to the web site with the red hat account user name and password

most of the time a simple search will pop up the needed information
for example
read/write to a MS windows NTFS formated drive you WILL need to install "ntfs-3g " ( NOT installed by default)
for the install instructions search red hat for " ntfs-3g"