RH 7.3 Server can't boot.....
 

I noticed that I couldn't access our RH 7.3 server via Telnet this morning, and when I went to login at the actual server, it would let me type in a username, but then just hang, before the password prompt came up. So after a hard reboot, it starts booting, finds all the drives, then comes up with an error that says "Your system appears to have shut down uncleanly, Press Y.......(which I know isn't uncommon), but before I can do anything, it comes up saying "Checking root filesystem.....execvp: Permission Denied" FAILED
Can anyone diagnose this? I'm trying to find these errors in my Linux Bible, but am having no luck so far.....Thanks VERY MUCH in advance. If you need more info, please let me know.

So I just booted up with an Emergency Repair Disk for this server, and it comes up with this:
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

What's the problem??

C'mon guys....Someones gotta be able to help me.....If not, I'm going to have to rebuild this thing or something.

i had exactly the same problems (i think) when i tryed to install RH9 on my computer. Its your RAM problem. here is why it was happenning:
I have P2 300 (i think) with the
64 MB chip in one slot, and
128 MB chip in another.
Both are 100 MHz
Then i put in a 32MB 66MHz chip from an old machine as 3rd chip
and tryed to install RH9. It gave me VERY similar errors to what you are getting
When i removed 32 MB chip RH installed just fine.

So, i think one of your memory chipsets died.

You're saying that my RAM is all of a sudden causing the server to not be able to mount properly???

i am saying that is possible.
"RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0" is exactly the error i was getting with as described in my last post. Try opening up the machine and playing around with RAM chipsets. It wont really hurt it, even if this is not the actual problem.

Ok, well I tried removing, switching, and adding back all the RAM and it's the same. That "Compressed image..." error only happens when I try booting from the floppy. This has to be something pretty basic I would think. The last thing I see before it hangs is:

Checking root filesystem
execvp: Permission Denied
[FAILED]
***An error occured during the file system check.
***Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
***when you leave the shell
Give root password for maintenance
(Or type Ctrl-D for normal startup):

Sorry to hear that it did not help, i am not sure how to proceed myself. I hope that someone here might be more helpfull for you than i was. Good luck.

Well, if you get to the "Give root password for maintenance" prompt, go ahead and enter the root password.

Now, does it crash at this point? or do you get a prompt?

If the former, you need to boot with a rescue disk or live cd. If the latter, then at the prompt run:

fsck /dev/hda

If you have ide disks, or /dev/sda for scsi or whatever. Just answer yes to everything. When it is finished, type exit.

I can enter the root password and then I am at the (Repair Filesystem)# prompt. The filesystems are all ext3. Not exactly sure what to do...But I need to figure it out very quick.

After entering the root password, I'm at the (Repair Filesystem) prompt, and can't even run fsck.....I get "Permission Denied". This BITES. This is ridiculous, YES I'm frustrated. Anyway, would it me much more of a hassle to just upgrade to RH 9.0 now? Can I just "upgrade" from the 9.0CD's and keep all my same partitions/packages/etc...? Will I have to mess with all the SCSI devices again? *Should* my boot-up problem be solved?

Well, I ran fsck.ext3 on my /var filesystem/partition and it found lots of errors and is fixing them now (hopefully).

Nope. Cleans ok, then hangs again at bootup. I did notice that after I run the filesystem check and type in "reboot", I get some quick errors about "couldn't unmount /var/.....". /Var is on it's own disk, and it is the one that I've done a filesystem check on.