system hangs every *other* time I boot
 

Hi-

I have Fedora Core 1 installed. It will run fine, then if I reboot it hangs at the login screen (or thereabouts). So I shut down, reboot, and it runs fine. Then if I reboot it hangs again, etc....

What can I do to figure out why it's doing this? It tends to hang when it's doing networking things. I have pcmcia wireless as eth1 (works fine) and an ethernet port as eth0, but I don't have a cable plugged in. Other than this I have no idea what could be causing this.

any ideas??

thanks
stephanie

any errors in /var/log/messages around the time it start's hanging?
at what stage in the startup does it hang? if you have a boot-splash disable it or something so that you can see where it hangs. then you'll know what to fix.

From some windows experience:

If the network card is enabled and there is no cable plugged, windows didn't hang but worked kind of jumpy. 2 seconds of hang and then 4 normal. Then agian, 2 secs of hang and then no hang. When I plugged the cable in windows worked normaly. Maybe the same is going on with Fedora. I think that when Fedora boots it sends some kind of ping to the eth0 and then waits for response. But because there is no cable there is no response. So it waits and waits and waits and .. until you restart it.

My sugestion is to plug the cable in and restart it two times to see if it will hang.

Greets!

reply to Rottie
 

Rottie-

newbie question: how do I view the messages file after the computer hangs? I have to reboot by just turning the power off, and when it restarts it writes over the file...

thanks!
stephanie

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any errors in /var/log/messages around the time it start's hanging?
at what stage in the startup does it hang? if you have a boot-splash disable it or something so that you can see where it hangs. then you'll know what to fix.
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Re: reply to Rottie
 

It writes over the file? I have no idea how you solve that. On my system it just appends the file with new information. I can view all errors my system has had since last year, not just from the last boot, with "less /var/log/messages"