Mandrake 10.1

Belegdol · 11-16-2004, 05:04 AM

Hi. I've instaled 10.1 Community today. There is a problem. After I type in my login and password, kdm window dissapears and nothing happens. CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE throws me out to bash, where I can login only as root, otherwise I see the blinking cursor. Same as when trying to run anything. After several minutes fromm booting, everything is back to normal. Weird, ain't it?

leejordan · 11-16-2004, 08:06 AM

Just to let you know that you''re not alone. The same thing happens to me.

Root logs in with no problems, but the first non-root user to login takes ages.

Lee.

leejordan · 11-16-2004, 08:49 AM

I have found the answer to this problem.

You have to disable the Devfsd task from starting at boot time in Mandrake Control Centre. That fixed it for me. I then uninstalled devfsd.

Apparently 10.1 uses udev instead of devfsd. I have no idea what any of this means!

Lee.

jonr · 11-16-2004, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by leejordan
I have found the answer to this problem.

You have to disable the Devfsd task from starting at boot time in Mandrake Control Centre. That fixed it for me. I then uninstalled devfsd.

Apparently 10.1 uses udev instead of devfsd. I have no idea what any of this means!

Lee.

I'm glad I'm not alone in not understanding some things!

Same thing was happening to me, on a lesser scale: it would take twenty-five seconds (by actual measurement) for the non-root user to get password verified.

Then the problem cleared itself up, I have no notion why. As of yesterday password verification was instantaneous--it's never been so fast in any of the past editions of Mdk I've used (8.0, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2).

Hope it stays that way.

Belegdol · 11-16-2004, 03:59 PM

Thanks for the quick reply.

student04 · 11-16-2004, 04:21 PM

I looked at some of the logs, and I get this error (I have a laptop with no floppy drive and I don't know how to fix it... ):

Code:

FATAL: Error inserting floppy (/lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko.gz): No such device

I use mandrake 10.0 Official using the 2.6.3-7mdk kernel and have devfsd in operation. Do I need it? Do I need either?

Drakconf states

Quote:

Name: devfsd
Version: 1.3.25-37mdk
Size: 54 KB

Summary: Daemon for providing old entries in /dev with devfs

Description: The devfsd programme is a daemon, run by the system boot scripts which can provide for intelligent management of device entries in the Device Filesystem (devfs).

As part of its setup phase devfsd creates certain symbolic links which are compiled into the code. These links are required by /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt. This behaviour may change in future revisions.

devfsd will read the special control file .devfsd in a mounted devfs, listening for the creation and removal of device entries (this is termed a change operation). For each change operation, devfsd can take many actions. The daemon will normally run itself in the background and send messages to syslog.

The opening of the syslog service is automatically delayed until /dev/log is created.

At startup, before switching to daemon mode, devfsd will scan the mounted device tree and will generate synthetic REGISTER events for each leaf node.

Quote:

Name: udev
Version: 013-4mdk
Size: 258 KB

Summary: A userspace implementation of devfs

Description: udev is a implementation of devfs in userspace using sysfs and /sbin/hotplug. It requires a 2.6 kernel to run properly.

Stopping devfsd from running DOES speed up the login process for me, too.

Thanks.

Belegdol · 11-16-2004, 05:04 PM

I've removed devfsd and system logs in normally, however i get two other errors. During boot up system says:

Code:

mount: mount: none already mounted or /dev/pts busy

and then:

Code:

Assigning raw devices: Cannot open master raw device '/dev/rawctl' (No such file or directory)

I don't know whether it is related to it, but I have to reinstall nVidia driver every time as it says "unable to initialize kernel module". Install, init 3, init 5 works fine but after reboot I have to deal with it again.

jonr · 11-16-2004, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Belegdol
I've removed devfsd and system logs in normally, however i get two other errors. During boot up system says:

Code:

mount: mount: none already mounted or /dev/pts busy

and then:

Code:

Assigning raw devices: Cannot open master raw device '/dev/rawctl' (No such file or directory)

I don't know whether it is related to it, but I have to reinstall nVidia driver every time as it says "unable to initialize kernel module". Install, init 3, init 5 works fine but after reboot I have to deal with it again.

Hmm! I get that message about raw devices, too, and have wondered what it means. Everything seems to be working OK, and the instantaneous login is really nice, though even I am patient enough generally to wait a few seconds. (I'm a very impatient person, sorry to say.)

opjose · 11-16-2004, 10:12 PM

You too?

Does your system by any chance NOT have a floppy drive in it?

I'm seeing this message on my laptop, which I eliminated by commenting all the lines in /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices.

Everything I looked at indicated that this was either a problem with a CD-ROM drive's "raw" controller node or a floppy drive.

jonr · 11-16-2004, 10:18 PM

I long ago disconnected the cable from my floppy drive and commented out the floppy drive in /etc/fstab. On MANY occasions the floppy was just churning away with no disk inside it, including at bootup time. (And it was not set as one of the boot choices in BIOS.)

I never used it anyway! As soon as I took those actions, no more trouble from that corner!

student04 · 11-16-2004, 10:36 PM

but i don't have a floppy in my fstab:

Code:

[alex@localhost alex]$ cat /etc/fstab
/dev/hdc6 / ext3 noatime 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdc7 /home ext3 noatime 1 2
/dev/hda /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/hdc2 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc8 /var/www ext3 noatime 1 2
/dev/hdc5 swap swap defaults 0 0

but the fast login was solved via the dvfsd thing.. though.. do i need it? that still wasn't answered... Does anyone know?

jonr · 11-16-2004, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by student04

but the fast login was solved via the dvfsd thing.. though.. do i need it? that still wasn't answered... Does anyone know?

I don't know about you, but I don't seem to need it. I don't have dvfsd in my list of services nor does a "locate" turn up any mention of it.

Everything basically running OK, can burn CD's, sync my Palm device, use Internet, etc., all the normal stuff I do.

I'd say if you're not doing something critical with your computer like life-support, try it without it and see if it hums along, and if so, so much the better.

student04 · 11-16-2004, 10:49 PM

Ok, thanks.

opjose · 11-16-2004, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jonr
I long ago disconnected the cable from my floppy drive and commented out the floppy drive in /etc/fstab. On MANY occasions the floppy was just churning away with no disk inside it, including at bootup time. (And it was not set as one of the boot choices in BIOS.)

I never used it anyway! As soon as I took those actions, no more trouble from that corner!

Hmm..

My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive either (it never did) nor did it ever have an FSTAB entry.

Yet dmesg finds a controller (probably imbedded in the chipset).

Co-incidence?

Possibly...

Belegdol · 11-17-2004, 07:22 AM

But what is /dev/pts?