I have a problem with my linux server. Which, is currently running on an IBM server RAID 5 with 3HDD.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (i586)
We have Novell OES1, and Novell iFolder 3.2.
Kernal: 2.6.5-7.244-default

I'm not an expert on linux, but I feel my problem is related to the way my drives have been mounted. I can no longer log into iFolder application, access Novell iManager - and I'm seeing lots of problems with apache.

When the server boots up, xWindows loads as normal, but as I move around the interface I start to see various messages such as:

'Will not save configuration'
'Configuration file ****** not writable'.

I've been reading some TID's on the internet which talk about the system going into RO mode to protect itself. I'm assuming this is what's happened to me. But who knows?

If I enter the command 'mount', at a prompt, it lists all the drives that are mounted the only one which is RO is my CDROM.

I found another TID which suggested giving the command:

Mount -o -rw,remount /

Which I believe should remount my drive as RW(Read/Write), but when I give this command, all I get is an error:-

'can't read superblock'.

If I exit xWindows, to return to the command prompt. When I log in as root, the message is displayed:

FATAL: cannot change permissions of TTY: Read-only file system.

So now I'm stuck with a server, that's not working well at all, and I'm looking for some advice, suggestions of where to go next.

Can you help.
Thanks,
Jon
haughjd@endekaceramics.com

What do you get if you isue:
$ df

It could happen that one partition has run out of space. Look at the "available space" column. It has to show a non-zero value, mainly in the root "/" partition.

This "can't read superblock" indicates filesystem corruption. Which may (or may be not) be hardware-related. In any case, you should boot it from a CD, leave partitions unmounted and run fsck utility.

I made an OES2 CD from the 60day eval download from Novell. When I boot using this CD, I was able to mount my filesystem. I was also able to create folders and write files using Vi. So this time my filesystem was RW. I have not been able to do this before.

Someone has suggested it could be my Kernal: 2.6.5-7.244-default. I'm told this is a little out of date. So is the answer to update it?

It sounds like its worth a try. Because the OES2 boot CD worked well.

My question now, Which Kernal should I use, where would I get it from how easy or not is it to install a new Kernal.

Hope you can help.

Regards,
Jon

This entire SuSE thing is terra incognita for me.

Did you run fsck on your filesytem(s)? Outdated or not, kernel can not cause mounting read-only. Mounting read-only occurs if filesystem has problems.

There is certainly a "SuSE way" to upgrade. Don't know how. Everybody can download kernel sources from kernel.org for free and build his/her own kernel.