Big problem booting up

Verted · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:59 am Post subject: Big problem booting up

Today I booted up, and something went wrong. The only actual error message I got was about not having the correct module to load dhcp or something along those lines.

That shouldnt have caused this problem though. Basicially, after boot had loaded everything, it didnt take me to an environment where I am able to login. gdm didnt appear (even though boot said 'Loading GDM') and there was no login in any of the VT's.

I think the problem may have been caused by updating config files yesterday (But I cannot be sure). The first thing I would like to try would be to copy my backup config files into /etc/. I've forgotten how to do this using the LiveCD, so if anyone could remind me that'd be great.

Alternately, does anyone know directly what might have caused this, and know how I can fix it?
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-Verted

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lnxz · Guru Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 472 Location: Earth

You didn't by any chance upgrade to the ~x86 version of baselayout? If you did and if you're not willing to troubleshoot alot, you should probably just mask the latest version of baselayout, downgrade it and do etc-update.
If you got a backup ready, you could just make sure bios has cdrom as first boot device, insert the cd, choose kernel and options from the livecd prompt, mount whatever partition your / is located on onto /mnt/gentoo, chroot to /mnt/gentoo by issuing chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash, do env-update and source /etc/profile, untar your backup and place files where they belong.
If you did upgrade baselayout you should downgrade it before you replace the new config files with the ones you have backed up.
When you're done restoring the backup you just issue the exit command, unmount /mnt/gentoo and reboot. Remember to remove the disc from your drive or restore the bios boot options, or else the live cd will boot again.

Verted · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:33 am Post subject:

I did an emerge world -uD yesterday, so that might have done it. Unfortunately I already tried the /etc/ thing:(

Unfortunately I dont have a full system backup. I'll just try to mount my disc, then chroot to my environment and see if I can downgrade it.

Erm, sorry, but I forget - How do I downgrade a package?
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-Verted

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miknight · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:41 am Post subject:

lnxz · Guru Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 472 Location: Earth

This should do the trick:

Verted · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:46 am Post subject:

Thanks for telling me how, although I dont think its the problem.

When I do 'emerge baselayout -p'

I get:
[ebuild R ] sys-apps/baselayout-1.12.0_pre1-r1

Which seems to be the same thing you get. Do I need to downgrade it?

Again, thanks for the support.
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-Verted

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lnxz · Guru Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 472 Location: Earth

cut and paste the command I posted, that should downgrade baselayout.
And yeah, baselayout might very well be your problem here, the ~x86 version seems to be a little b0rked at the moment. It works quite nice for me though, besides some minor annoyances like the mysql startup script doesn't behave at all and the fact that if a process fails to start during boot my whole system freezes.

playerx · n00b Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 46

This was my experience with the latest base layout on ~x86:

I happily emerged the updates, (-avuD) and did the usual etc-update. I didn't reboot just then, I ended up rebooting because of another thing, oh well, but then I saw the differences i kind of liked the changes, some of the inits were more complete (such as net.eth0). Anyway, I saw mysql init had failed, but since there had been a mysql update i didn't bother too much i would fix it later, then cron starts, ddclient starts and everything stops. Local wasn't started and I didn't have vt's, my first reaction was to reboot then i had my 5 minutes of dispair and i thought it might be baselayout. I searched the whole house for a live cd but those things never show up when necessary

(and i have a lot). Then I rebooted once again and I saw ssh had been started, well i just used another pc and did what lnxz said

lnxz · Guru Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 472 Location: Earth

I think the new baselayout introduces some (at least one) new feature(s).
Something to do with making sure services REALLY start and doesn't just fail silently.
At least the /etc/conf.d/rc suggests this (the timer thingy).

miknight · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:08 pm Post subject:

Verted · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:15 pm Post subject:

Erm. I downgraded the baselayout. Problem is still there>_<

Any new ideas? Maybe I did something wrong. Perhaps I made some bad choices updating the config files (Like some I didnt update because they took away variables which I needed).

Its really getting annoying now. Especially since that was such a good suggestion.

*EDIT*
I've just noticed that I have some weidness with /etc/. I have, /etc/etc/ and /etc/etc/etc/ directories (It doesnt go beyond that). So I think the config files that are still being read are the bad ones. Is there a way to find out which I need, and what should I do to correct this?
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-Verted

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lnxz · Guru Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 472 Location: Earth

Delete the etc folders inside /etc, reemerge baselayout, use all the new configs, no merging and no zapping, and carefully go through all the new configs. I can't really think of anything else, sorry.

Verted · Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 11:01 am Post subject:

That did the trick:) I'm back to normal. I guess the problem was with baselayout - I'll be more careful updating that in the future. Thanks everyone for the help:D
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-Verted

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