Hi all,

I recently made a full on-line update of Suse 7.3 and after that, I got plenty of error messages at boot up time. Those messages are all related to files or links in the rc5.d directory. The error message also displays something about "rc.config".

Although I have a good understanding of computers in general and I can usually find my way in Linux as well, I'm far from being fluent in Linux. I can navigate and edit files with "vi", install an rpm file but I don't know where a newly installed program gets installed and how to start it (e.g. I recently installed gm to have an interface to map Win2000 network drives, "start gm" is set to "yes" in rc.config but I don't know what to do from there to actually use and configure gm)

So please don't be afraid to be too explicit

Thanks,
Gaetano.

Hi!

Could you please give us some of those messages. I am not familiar with Suse (I use RedHat), but I believe that the logs are in /var/log/ somewhere. Try looking at /var/log/boot.log

If the error messages are in that file, please post them here.

Regards
Martin

Hi Martin,

Here is an extract of the error messages. There is a lot more, but this should probably be enough to start with

By the way, the boot.log file you suggested to check is empty.

The system boots up OK despite those errors.

extract from /var/log/boot.msg:

/etc/init.d/boot.d/S10serial: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Configuring serial ports...
ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Configured serial ports
done/etc/init.d/boot.d/S20boot.setup: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Running /etc/init.d/boot.local
/etc/init.d/boot.local: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
doneCreating /var/log/boot.msg
done<notice>killproc: kill(27,29)
Enabling syn flood protectiondone
Disabling IP forwardingdone
<notice>killproc: kill(27,3)
INIT: Entering runlevel: 5
Boot logging started on /dev/tty1(/dev/console) at Mon Nov 24 19:15:27 2003
Master Resource Control: previous runlevel: N, switching to runlevel: 5
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01SuSEfirewall2_init start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01SuSEfirewall2_init: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01SuSEfirewall2_init start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01SuSEfirewall_init start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01SuSEfirewall_init: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01SuSEfirewall_init start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01dummy start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01dummy: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01dummy start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01i4l_hardware start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01i4l_hardware: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01i4l_hardware start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01personal-firewall.initial start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01personal-firewall.initial: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Starting personal-firewall (initial) [not active]unused
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01personal-firewall.initial start' exits with status 6
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01random start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01random: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Initializing random number generatordone
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S01random start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S02dhclient start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S02dhclient: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S02dhclient start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S02i4l start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S02i4l: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S02i4l start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S05network start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S05network: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Setting up network device eth0
done<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S05network start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S06hotplug start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S06hotplug: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Starting hotplugging services [ usb ]done
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S06hotplug start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S06zebra start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S06zebra: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S06zebra start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07bgpd start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07bgpd: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07bgpd start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ospf6d start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ospf6d: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ospf6d start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ospfd start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ospfd: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ospfd start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ripd start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ripd: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ripd start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ripngd start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ripngd: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07ripngd start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07route start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07route: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Setting up routing (using /etc/route.conf)done
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S07route start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08SuSEfirewall2_setup start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08SuSEfirewall2_setup: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08SuSEfirewall2_setup start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08SuSEfirewall_setup start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08SuSEfirewall_setup: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08SuSEfirewall_setup start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08cyrus start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08cyrus: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08cyrus start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08gm start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08gm: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
Loading GM module<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08gm start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08ntopd start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08ntopd: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08ntopd start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08snmpd start
/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08snmpd: /etc/rc.config: Permission denied
<notice>'/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08snmpd start' exits with status 0
<notice>/etc/init.d/rc5.d/S08sshd start

I'm more than happy with this...

This is probably a difference between distributions. On my (RedHat) system, that is where the messages go.

Since I'm not very familiar with SuSe, I can only give general suggestions. Hopefully someone else knows this better and can give a better answer. I think you should look at the file permissions for the rc.config file. You see them if you type:
ls -l /etc/rc.config
in a terminal window. I don't have that file, but take a look at this:
Try setting the permissions for your rc.config similarly to that file. As root, type
chmod 755 /etc/rc.config
This means that everyone can read and execute the file and the owner (root) can also edit it.

Did that help? Otherwise someone else can tell you what permissions the file should have.

Regards
Martin

Martin,

I was a bit careless because I didn't backup the original rc.config file before running chmod 755 on it. After doing this, I rebooted the system to see whether your suggestion would fix the error messages and now my system does not boot at all ...

It stops before even reaching the step where it loads the various modules of rc.config.

The error message is "rc.config: fork: resource temporarily unavailable", then it simply hangs forever (it is not frozen though but nothing can be done - no terminals available).

I tried to repair the system with the SuSE 9.0 boot CD but none of the automated tools works.

I'll try to change the permissions through a boot disk

Gaetano.

Sorry 'bout that. But I don't think that changing the permissions for the file really is the problem in this case.

If you didn't know, "fork" is used to create new processes. I have no idea why that shouldn't work.

Seems that you need a guru now. This poor linux user is out of good ideas.

Regards
Martin