On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 11:13:16PM -0500, Florin Iucha wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 10:40:16PM -0500, Chris Schumann wrote:
> > I have a ThinkPad 600X (800MHz PIII, 576MB RAM, 40GB disk, etc) that WAS
> > running FC5 just great... but I did some updates and messed around with the
> > Services settings.
> > 
> > The first bad sign was that the machine would hang during booting right
> > before the login screen. I had to turn it off, but I could boot into
> > runlevel 3, log in and run "init 5" and everything was great. So I tried to
> > fix it...
> > 
> > Now, starting in runlevel 3 hangs right after it asks me for a user name.
> > The system is completely unresponsive. I haven't tried to go in remotely
> > because it's set up for spiffy WiFi with the easy configuration tool, but I
> > have to log in and give it the default keyring password before it will
> > configure the card.
> > 
> > So now, I can boot into runlevel 1. Joy.
> 
> Hold it, your runlevels are dropping fast... and 0 is not too comfy ;)

Ah, but run level 1 is a good start.

> Boot with a live CD and you can continue to "fix" things 8^)

You don't need to boot a live CD - you can get into run level 1.  

cd /etc/rc.d/rc3.d
ls S*

You'll get a list of every startup script at this run level, in the
order that they will run.  Now run each one individually, pausing
between each one.  You need to find out which one is causing the
system to hang.  Once you've got that narrowed down, you can figure out
what to do about it - disable that service if you don't need it, or fix
it.

Just out of curiousity, does the system really hang or just pause for
about 5 minutes?  Did you start up sendmail before your network is up?
If so, you'll have DNS issues and sendmail doesn't like running without
DNS...

Another possibility is that you filled /var beyond 80% and auditd is
hanging the system.  A quick google search will probably tell you what
to do about that.

        .../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program