NFS/NIS: startup hangs at "Starting system message bus..." after switching server hardware
 

Hi,

I'm currently facing a really annoying problem. Our local school just bought two brand-new HP servers, in replacement of the old Dell servers we had here. Servers are running Slackware64 14.1, all desktop clients are running Slackware 14.1 32-bit.

On the old main server, I had a NIS+NFS setup with central authentication, which has been working flawlessly for a few years. I just replaced the hardware, reinstalled the server and copied over the exact same configuration. Same hostname, same network configuration, everything is exactly the same. Only when I start a client, startup get stuck a very long time at this message:

After a very long time, it eventually resumes booting, but I can't really login. Well, I can (sort of) log in as root, which takes almost a minute to get to a password prompt, that is, if it doesn't time out.

I'm completely clueless as to what can cause this error. Plus, I'm in a mild panic, because the whole network should be up again tomorrow morning, so I'm facing a bit of a countdown.

Any suggestions?

Niki

when I had similar issues they were always related by:
- non-working/reachable nfs mounts in /etc/fstab
- nis server not responding
it can be also related by a network misconfiguration of the client/server.

this might help.

I tried various scenarios, but to no avail. It's a mystery, and I'm pulling my hair out.

ethtool on the interfaces. There may be a mismatch between what the interfaces believe they should use to talk to each other. You'll get tons of dropped packets that way.

Did you update the NICs in your iptables script?

Edit: sorry - ignore that. Wasn't thinking.

Looks like your NIS doesn't work. D-Bus hangs because it switches to messagebus user and nss tries to connect the yp server.

On the new server check again if the stuff in /etc/ and /var/yp is identical to the old server (passwd shadow etc..). Did you run the makefile in /var/yp. May be you forgot /etc/defaultdomain. Is /etc/rc.d/rc.yp executable.

On a client replace /etc/nsswich.conf by the default no-NIS. This will allow you to login as root without delay.

Can you ping your server from your client ;)

Cheers

Thanks for your detailed suggestions. This morning I started everything from scratch with a clean head, and everything works perfectly now.

Cheers,

Niki