LinuxQuestions.org - Linux stalls completely during boot

- Linux - Newbie (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/)

- - Linux stalls completely during boot (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/linux-stalls-completely-during-boot-163633/)

Linux stalls completely during boot

I'm running SuSE 9.0 on an Athlon 2000+, dual boot with Win 2000. Sometimes when I switch on the machine or when I restart the computer (doesn't matter whether I restart it from Linux or from Windows) the Linux boot process stalls shortly before the end, right after the system console font gets loaded. During a normal boot process the three next lines are:

Code:

Starting hardware scan on bootStarting CRON daemon        done

Starting Name Service Cache Daemon                        done

                                                        done

After that gdm starts. And yes, the hardware scan and CRON daemon lines always are on the same line, which offsets the 'done' results by a line.

Sometimes part of the first line quoted does appear, sometimes even the whole line with one 'done' result, but most often these lines do not appear. Sometimes the system takes a while then goes on (when this happens I can change caps lock or num lock state on the keyboard, so I know the system is still doing something), but usually there is no response anymore, and I have to hard reset.

I suppose that something is going wrong with the hardware scan, but the question is, how can I find out what it is? Is there a log file somewhere which could give me a hint as to what part of the scan did not work out (or at least which worked up to a point)?

Robin

Log files for

SuSE /var/log/boot.msg
/var/log/messages

Fedora /var/log/boot.log
/var/log/dmesg
/var/log/messages

Mandrake /var/log/boot.log
/var/log/dmesg
/var/log/messages

Check log file. Maybe the process that is causing this may not be required
There is a way to should down processes but I can't remember how to get there.

I had to wait for a recurrence of the problem first... :)

So, in the folder mentioned I found boot.msg and boot.omsg, both with the date of today. boot.omsg stops after the line

Code:

doneLoading console font lat9w-16.psfu -m trivial (B

boot.msg continues after that with the following lines:

Code:

done<notice>exit status of (splash postfix kbd autofs) is (0 0 0 6)

<notice>start services (nscd hwscan cron)

Starting hardware scan on boot<notice>startproc: execve (/usr/sbin/cron) [ /usr/sbin/cron ], [ CONSOLE=/dev/console TERM=linux SHELL=/bin/sh progress=39 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.82 REDIRECT=/dev/tty1 COLUMNS=148 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin vga=0x31a RUNLEVEL=5 PWD=/ PREVLEVEL=N LINES=51 HOME=/ SHLVL=2 splash=silent sscripts=43 _=/sbin/startproc DAEMON=/usr/sbin/cron ]

<notice>startproc: execve (/usr/sbin/nscd) [ /usr/sbin/nscd ], [ CONSOLE=/dev/console TERM=linux SHELL=/bin/sh progress=39 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.82 REDIRECT=/dev/tty1 COLUMNS=148 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin vga=0x31a RUNLEVEL=5 PWD=/ PREVLEVEL=N LINES=51 HOME=/ SHLVL=2 splash=silent sscripts=43 _=/sbin/startproc DAEMON=/usr/sbin/nscd ]

Starting CRON daemondone

Starting Name Service Cache Daemondone

<notice>exit status of (nscd hwscan cron) is (0 0 0)

And after that the login manager starts. But I can't pretend to really make much sense of this. Could it be the notification which stalls the system? It appears the other three services are started simultaneously but don't seem to get anywhere when the system actually stalls, they might not even get started at all.

Robin

hmmm.... perhaps ACPI is causing a problem. Is there ACPI support on your motherboard? do you know if the kernel is trying to do ACPI? If it is, try disabling it.

My motherboard does support ACPI, and I left the entry for 'ACPI aware OS' at yes but disabled Power Management (all specific power management features had been disabled before anyway). Now I'll have to check whether the problem returns...

I don't get the impression the kernel is trying to do anything with ACPI, though; at least there is nothing in Yast's hardware section to imply that though it does list power management features, and the two diagnostic commands suggested on the SuSE site for ACPI problems, which I found linked to at http://www.suse.de/en/private/produc...i386/acpi.html and which I downloaded, do not seem to work on my system. They return 'no permission' no matter whether I run them as a user or as root.

Robin

What are the lines returning no permission?