Boot Process Hangs in RH9

[rrunolfson]

This installation is about 2 weeks old, but since the beginning, when I reboot the machine, the boot process and shutdown process will hang.

Several line items will be processed and then it will hang.
If I hit "q" and <return> it will proceed to the next item and I eventually get to the GUI.

My questions are:

1. Is anyone else seeing this?
2. If you have seen it, how did you fix it?
3. What file logs the boot process so that I can explore that for errors?

TIA

[coltrane]

1. Not me
2. See above 'N/A'
3. /var/log/boot.msg

[Kernel_Killer]

What is it initializing when it hangs? What is it trying to load? I've had this happen with hardware and applications that is not configured correctly.

[rrunolfson]

OK...here are the gorry details....

Everything works fine ( [OK] ) up until:

updating /etc/fstab

This reports [OK] to the right of the screen, but when the cursor moves to the next line it just sits there. That is when I hit "q" (for quit) and <enter> then the next line starts processing. If I don't hit the "q" it will sit there forever.

I go through this same process (sometimes have to hit "q" multiple times) for:

"bringing up loopback interface"
"bringing up interface eth0"
"starting kernel logger"
"starting portmapper"
"initializing random number generator"
"starting sshd"


These are the usual suspects. Once I pass the "starting sshd" everything processes on its own and I get all the way to the GUI.

/var/log/messages reports no "failed" line items. I searched from most recent:

1.4.1 restart

all the way to...

session opened for user root

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I am working in DOS 20 years ago and I have a bad "CONFIG.SYS" or "AUTOEXEC.BAT" file.

Plus here is my /var/log/boot.log for my most recent boot
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jun 1 07:52:34 red syslog: syslogd startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:52:34 red syslog: klogd startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:52:26 red ifup:
Jun 1 07:52:26 red ifup: Determining IP information for eth0...
Jun 1 07:52:39 red portmap: portmap startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:07 red nfslock: rpc.statd startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:07 red keytable: Loading keymap:
Jun 1 07:53:07 red keytable: ^[[60G
Jun 1 07:53:07 red keytable:
Jun 1 07:53:07 red keytable: Loading system font:
Jun 1 07:53:07 red keytable: ^[[60G
Jun 1 07:53:07 red keytable:
Jun 1 07:53:07 red rc: Starting keytable: succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:08 red random: Initializing random number generator: succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:33 red netfs: Mounting other filesystems: succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:33 red apmd: apmd startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:34 red autofs: automount startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:35 red sshd: succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:51 red xinetd: xinetd startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:57 red sendmail: sendmail startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:57 red sendmail: sm-client startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:58 red gpm: gpm startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:53:58 red crond: crond startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:54:05 red cups: cupsd startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:54:06 red xfs: xfs startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:54:06 red anacron: anacron startup succeeded
Jun 1 07:54:07 red atd: atd startup succeeded

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Isn't this nuts?? Everything succeeds, but you wouldn't know it by WATCHING the boot process. I have to be there to physically hit that "q" key.

[Kernel_Killer]

Even though it make take awile, you might let it boot without forcing it continue on. There have been times where once it's done with that, all is much quicker the next time.

Also, since I see you have some network devices and daemons struggling. Do a 'netstat -rn' and see if everything is set correctly.

[Schotty]

Make sure that your DNS is configured correctly. This sounds like your DNS resolutuion is off. For example, check the /etc/hosts and ensure that localhost is listed as 127.0.0.1.

That could cause all holy hell if it isnt there.