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Conference turris::digital_unix

Title:DIGITAL UNIX(FORMERLY KNOWN AS DEC OSF/1)
Notice:Welcome to the Digital UNIX Conference
Moderator:SMURF::DENHAM
Created:Thu Mar 16 1995
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:10068
Total number of notes:35879

9859.0. "`who -r' returns null" by NNTPD::"[email protected]" (Jason Orendorf) Sat May 17 1997 00:28

Customer's 4.0B system won't boot multiuser.  At boot he gets:
"...(standard kernel boot)
 update started
 IFS=
 MAILCHECK=600
 PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
 /sbin/rc2: test: argument expected"

After much searching, we find out that these are caused by `who -r` returning
null instead of the runlevel information.  So I had him null out utmp in
single user mode.  Now at boot, he gets:

"...(standard boot)
 Starting LSM
 29: /sbin/who: /sbin/loader: fatal error cannot map libc.so
 Checking local filesystems
 ..." then goes on to give the same messages from above.

What's going on here?  `who -r` gets it's info from utmp.  I'm assuming init
puts it there when it goes to runlevel 2.  He has patch kit 002 installed &
is now planning to install patch kit 003 hoping that something gets fixed.

Any other ideas/suggestions appreciated.

-Jason
[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
9859.1SIOG::BR_MURPHYMon May 19 1997 07:492
    Have you verified libc
9859.2checksums match patch kit 002NNTPD::"[email protected]"Jason OrendorfMon May 19 1997 16:228
The checksum/permissions for who is correct.  The checksum for /shlib/libc.so
matches the libc.so from patch kit 002.  He's already run 'allverify' to
check & correct permissions/ownership problems and report checksum problems.

-Jason

[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]
9859.3separate /varSMURF::DUSTINMon May 19 1997 18:087
    He probably has a separate /var filesystem which isn't mounted
    at the time who -r is run, so the utmp file isn't available...
    
    I think we covered this one already in here somewhere..
    
    John
9859.4or did my guy probably have separate /var too?finder.uvo.dec.com::COFFEYJLa Feline Flooz - a unix catTue May 20 1997 06:0110
ALSO it appears who -r is stitched up by the fact that 
the root file system is read only up to a certain point 
in the boot sequence (sometime after single user) 

We came across this with a customer trying to 
install patches, he'd _foolishly_ booted up to single 
user mode rather than dropping down to it so as utmp
hadn't been updated it thought it was still halted 
when he tried to do anything :-)