Hi --
My problem:
> After a reboot this morning, we find ourselves unable to log into one
> of our AlphaServer 4100 5/466 hosts. We get a `Last login:' message,
> and the /etc/motd file, but then nothing else. The system will echo
> keystrokes, but we don't get to a shell prompt.
Many thanks to all who responded with many hints and guesses
to my problem:
Sheila Hollenbaugh
Dr. Thomas.Blinn
Calvin Coghlan
Ken Kleiner
Marie-Claude VIALATTE
Tony McElhill
Bryan Lavelle
Jem Treadwell
Richard Westlake
Alan Davis
Paul Roetman
Ashley Frost
Although nobody guessed the actual problem (most folks, understandably,
pointing to NFS), Sheila encouraged me to boot to run level 2
(which I could do) and then start the scripts in /sbin/rc3.d by hand,
one-by-one.
Doing this allowed me to observe that (indeed) /bin/login was
hanging up for incoming telnet sessions before handing off to
the shell.
The problem turned out to be a too-long line in the group
file for NIS, which happened --literally-- overnight. This
can really mess you up.
--
-- Paul A. Sand | A file that big?
-- University of New Hampshire | It might be very useful.
-- pas_at_unh.edu | But now it is gone.
-- http://pubpages.unh.edu/~pas | (David J. Liszewski)
Received on Thu Jan 04 2001 - 19:55:04 NZDT