Conference wrksys::mikasa

914.0. "cannot boot to single-user mode" by MUNICH::CUZUM () Mon Jun 02 1997 12:47

Hi, folks,

customer has an AlphaServer 1000. He called because he isn't able to
login as root. Seems, he changed something in the passwd and/or lost the
root password. I suggested to boot to single user mode, then mount -u /
etc... and change the password for "root". Now he tells me, he isn't
able to boot to single-user mode. We tried:
>>> boot -fl s
unknown system state
system must be reset prior to boot

then he tried:
>>> start
halted cpu0
haltcode=2
kernel stack not valid: halt
pc=0
boot failure

I tried:
>>> set boot_osflags ""
>>> boot
again: unknown system state etc....

Last we did:
>>> set boot_osflags "a"
>>> boot
and there were no problems booting to multi-user mode and log in as
non-root-user. What are we doing wrong to boot to single-user? Can you 
give me some advice, please?


Regards,

Corina

Hello,

customer is getting the unknown system state because he did not shut the system
down, he pressed the halt button.
In this case the best would be:
>>> set auto_action halt
>>> init
....
>>> set auto_action boot
>>> b -fl s
If you do not set auto_action to halt, the system will boot the default boot
section, what is multi-user in most cases.

�tzi

    Don't know what's wrong, but I can't get this machine into the
    single-user state. After setting auto_action as you said above and
    trying to bring the system to single-user mode with:
    >>> boot -fl s
    we get:
    single user mode:
    -:csh: not found
    init: level 3
    and the system goes into run level 3
    
    Any suggestion? 
    
    Thanks in advance,
    
    Corina
    

    you ma try these steps...
    
    >>> init
    >>> boot -fl 0
    
    # fsck -p
    # mount -a
    #