Solaris 10 boot-archive question

happymonkey · 11-19-2012, 10:34 PM

Hi,

I'm new to Solaris 10 and I'm trying to learn compiling and installing software; right now I try to complile VLC 2.0.4 by myself... I installed some packages from Sunfreeware, some packages from OpenCSW and other that I compiled myself ("make install")... I installed a lot of libraries and then when I tried to reboot my Solaris 10 U7 SPARC I got the following error regarding the boot archive:

Code:

WARNING: The following files in / differ from the boot archive: 
...
big bunch of lines like
new   /platform/sun4u/...
....

The recommended action is to reboot to the failsafe archive to correct the above inconsistency. To accomplish this, on a GRUB-based platform, reboot and select the "solaris failsafe" option from the boot menu. On an OBP-based platform, reboot and type "boot -F failsafe". Then follow the prompts to update the boot archive. Alternatively, to contntinue booting at your own risk, you may clear the service bby running: "svcadm clear system/boot-archive"

svc.startd(7): svc/system/boot-archive:default: Method "/lib/svc/method/boot-archivew" failed with exit status 95.
svc.startd(7): system /boot-archive:default failed fatally: transitioned to maintenance (see 'svcs -xv' for details)

I then booted in failsafe mode and when asked if I wanted to repair the boot archive I wrote "yes"; now they don't ask me to repair it anymore when I boot in "failsafe" mode but I still get that message when I boot in "normal" mode.

When I boot in maintenance mode and type

Code:

svcadm clear system/boot-archive

the system boot into X-Windows but there's a lot of errors and I don't have any network access, so I figure it's not the right thing to do for fixing permanently the problem...

I then tried in failsafe mode:

Code:

rm -f /a/platform/'uname -i'/boot-archive
rm -f /a/platform/sun4u/boot-archive
/usr/sbin/bootadm update-archive -R /a
init 6

I don't really know what to do next, I had figured that booting into fail-safe mode and repairing the boot-archive would fix the problem... I would really like to salvage this Solaris installation since there's many hours put into compiling and installing libraries and packages...

xeleema · 11-24-2012, 07:44 AM

Greetingz!

The boot-archive is a lot like the initrd on a Linux system. It contains a filesystem mounted by the kernel that has scripts/modules/etc that help the kernel find all the hardware it needs to boot the server.

However, boot-archive problems typically occur when a change to an /etc/ file, an update to a module, or a change to another critical part of the Solaris OS has not been 'brought into the fold' during a shutdown.

So has the Solaris system lost-power or otherwise not been shutdown correctly?

There's two services you need to check on, svc:/system/boot-archive:default and svc:/system/boot-archive-update:default.

The error you spoke of was probably along the lines of "WARNING: The following files in / differ from the boot archive". Do this;
(Note: /mnt/tmp is where I mounted my root, YMMV)

1) Get into the system and mount the root filesystem
2) rename the existing boot archive

Code:

mv  /mnt/tmp/platform/`uname -i`/boot_archive

3) Rebuild the boot-archive

Code:

/usr/sbin/bootadm -R /mnt/tmp/ update-archive

4) Reboot. (Might want to unmount root first.)

P.S: if you have DiskSuite be sure to activate the mirrors first.

happymonkey · 11-25-2012, 02:48 AM

Hi,

Thanks for the answer; however it did not solved the problem; I tried something else and it kind of worked even if I'm not certain of the quality of that quick fix... I looked at the file /lib/svc/method/boot-archive and since it was a script I simply commented out the lines calling the check of the boot archive:

Code:

#
# Now check the archive.
#

#Lines comented by me; left only the one where it call an exit without error
##/sbin/bootadm update-archive -vnC 2> /dev/null
##if [ $? = 0 ]; then
	exit $SMF_EXIT_OK
##fi

Then to solve the network access problem I simply did "sys-unconfig" to return to a blank system... I don't know if those fixes are going to work on the long-term, but Solaris 10 is far too complicated for a Unix newbie like me...

In any case thanks for the help.