I don't know a thing about Linux and I'm stuck with a command prompt!

comfortador · 09-13-2009, 07:09 PM

Hello

I have an HP Compaq 2133 mini-notebook running SUSE Linus 10 (I'm fairly sure). When I turn it on, it goes straight to a command prompt asking me to log in, which I manage to do, but then I'm lost because I have no idea what's wrong or how to fix it or how to get out of it.

In the interest of getting an answer, here is what the screen says (from the point I can see):

Code:

Loading libata
Loading sata/via
Loading reiserfs
Loading jbd
Loading ext3
Wating for device /dev/sda2 to appear:    ok
rootfs: major=8 minor=2 devn=2050
fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
[/bin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sda2
/dev/sda2: clean, 122129/396000 files, 698354/813282 blocks
fsck succeeded. Mounting root device read-write.
Mounting root /dev/sda2
INIT: version 2.86 booting
System Boot Control: Running /etc/init.d/boot
Mounting procfs at /proc
Mounting sysfs at /sys
MMounting debugfs at /sys/kernel/debug
Initializing /dev
Mounting devpts at /dev/pts
Boot logging started on /dev/tty1(/dev/console (deleted)) at Sun Sep 13 14:42:25 2009
System Boot Control: the system has been set up
System Boot Control: Running /etc/init.d/boot.local
blogd: no message logging because /var file system is inaccessible
INIT: Entering runlevel: 5
Boot logging started on /dev/tty1(/dev/console) at Sun Sep 13 14:42:46 2009
Master Resource Control: previous runlevel: N, switching to runlevel: 5
Master Resource Control: runlevel 5 has been reached

Welcome to SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP1 (i586) - Kernel 2.6.16.54-0.2.5-default (tty1).

(none) login:

Like I said, I have no problem logging in, but I don't know what to do afterwards.

Thanks in advance.

Hi_This_is_Dev · 09-13-2009, 07:19 PM

Hey! Give this commnad after you have logged in:

Code:

startx

I see that runlevel 5 is already reached so you should see the GUI/Desktop instead. However, try that command and let me know what you see or get.

Besides, you can do almost everything from the command/shell prompt itself. Some examples:

Listing your directory contents:

Code:

ls

Displying your current directory / present working directory:

Code:

pwd

Changing your login password:

Code:

passwd

Creating a user account:

Code:

useradd UserName

Assigning a password to a user account:

Code:

passwd UserName

And a lot. I mentioned those commands because you seem to be new in the world of UNIX/Linux.

Cheers!

chrism01 · 09-13-2009, 07:19 PM

Try

startx

which should give you a GUI.
If it errors, post them here and we'll take a look

Tinkster · 09-13-2009, 07:19 PM

Hi, welcome to LQ!

In the output above this line

Code:

blogd: no message logging because /var file system is inaccessible

requires some attention. I assume it actually says klogd, not blogd ...

Can you post the content of your /etc/fstab and the output of "fdisk -l"?

Cheers,
Tink

chrism01 · 09-13-2009, 07:21 PM

Wow; 3 posts with the same timestamp... must be some kind of record

r3sistance · 09-13-2009, 08:04 PM

I would look into why /var has not loaded. The log clearly states that SUSE is in init runlevel 5 what is the run level for Multiuser Mode with Networking and X Display Manager. So this would indicate that either their is no Display Manager or the Display Manager is inaccessable or broken. If I had to hazard a guess that might be related to /var not loading properly. However just incase, when you installed SUSE you did install a display manager like Gnome or KDE right?

comfortador · 09-13-2009, 08:16 PM

To chris and hi: startx got it going immediately. which is nifty, to say the least.

to Tinkster: I entered what you suggested in the terminal. for /etc/fstab is said "Permission Denied" (I was logged in as root, btw).

For "fdisk -|" a ">" appeared and nothing else.

I had a feeling not all was right, even after it seemed like everything was okey dokey. For example, under Hard Drive under Status it says Ob Free / 0b Total.

Thanks to all for the help so far.

r3sistance · 09-13-2009, 08:22 PM

If possible,

Try getting the output of the following commands and paste them here.

ls /dev | grep sd

ls -la /

mount

From this hopefully we might be able to figure out something to help you fix this problem or atleast mounting the partitions in a way that problems could be fixed. As I am assuming this is a fresh install, a re-installation could possibly fix it, their is a chance it was just a bad install.

lhorace · 09-13-2009, 08:33 PM

Is this just happening or after fresh install?

schneidz · 09-13-2009, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by comfortador

To chris and hi: startx got it going immediately. which is nifty, to say the least.

to Tinkster: I entered what you suggested in the terminal. for /etc/fstab is said "Permission Denied" (I was logged in as root, btw).

For "fdisk -|" a ">" appeared and nothing else.

I had a feeling not all was right, even after it seemed like everything was okey dokey. For example, under Hard Drive under Status it says Ob Free / 0b Total.

Thanks to all for the help so far.

it should be 'fdisk -l' not 'fdisk -|'

Hi_This_is_Dev · 09-13-2009, 09:08 PM

Quote:

For "fdisk -|" a ">" appeared and nothing else.

Give the command as follows:

Code:

-bash-2.05b# fdisk -l

Note: It's an l and not a pipe | after the hyphen (-). The command lists all the partitions your system has.

Code:

ls -la /

will give you the detailed list of the directory and files which are stored on the root partition. / indicates root partition. The switch -a will display files and directories that begin with a dot (.) and l will give you a long or detailed list showing permissions, date, ownership, size, etc.

Code:

mount

lists the paritions which are currently mounted on their respective mount points.

r3sistance has asked you to give all those details and I have just tried to explain you what those commands do.

When you see > after entering a command and nothing happens then you can press Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Z to cancel/stop the process and get the shell prompt.

Do one thing:

Code:

-bash-2.05b# vi /etc/inittab

and check the last line given here is found in your file too:

Code:

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:5:initdefault:

AllanP · 09-13-2009, 09:42 PM

My Suse 11.1 has all of a sudden refused to boot with the same message:
"blogd: no message logging because /var files system is not accessible".
It was fine last boot up and shut down. I didn't alter anything so a real puzzler for me.

lhorace · 09-13-2009, 09:45 PM

Just try Hi_This_is_Dev, solution, it might help rectify the problem

comfortador · 09-13-2009, 10:07 PM

When I entered fdisk -l:

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 4009MB, 4009549824 bytes
255 Heads, 63 sectors/track, 487 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16005 * 512 = 8225280

   Device Boot   Start   End   Blocks   Id   System
/dev/sda1          406   467   498015   82   Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2  *         1   405  3253131   83   Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

When I entered "ls /dev | grep sd":

Code:

ptysd
sda
sda1
sda2
ttysd

When I entered "ls -la /":

Code:

total 136
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root  4096 2009-09-13 14:35 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root  4096 2009-09-13 14:35 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 2009-04-28 13:01 bin
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  4096 2009-06-16 23:20 boot
drwxr-xr-x  9 root root  5920 2009-09-13 15:31 dev
drwxr-xr-x 87 root root 12288 2009-09-13 17:20 etc
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  4096 2009-06-16 23:19 home
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root  4096 2009-04-28 12:39 lib
drwx------  2 root root 16384 2009-04-28 13:30 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 2009-07-06 04:45 media
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 2009-05-03 09:46 mnt
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root  4096 2009-04-28 12:59 opt
drwxr-xr-x 79 root root     0 2009-09-13 14:42 proc
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 2009-04-28 12:59 repository
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    43 2009-09-12 01:51 .resume_monitor.nm-tool
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   152 2009-09-12 01:51 .resume_monitor.resolv.conf
drwx------ 14 root root  4096 2009-09-13 17:23 root
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 12288 2009-04-28 13:01 sbin
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root  4096 2009-04-28 10:41 srv
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root     0 2009-09-13 14:42 sys
drwxr-xr-x 56 root root 32768 2009-09-13 16:29 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root  4096 2009-04-28 12:32 usr
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root  4096 2009-09-13 12:25 var

The things in the last column are blue EXCEPT the two obviously longer ones, which are black. Also tmp is highlighted in green.

When I enter "mount":

Code:

/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /mnt type ext3 (rw)

that should be all of it.

comfortador · 09-13-2009, 10:19 PM

oh yeah.

When I enter "vi /etc/inittab", it says this after what you also have:

Code:

#
10:0:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 0
11:1:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 1
12:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2
13:3:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 3
#14:4:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 4
15:5:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 5
16:6:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 6