Troy Dawson wrote:
> Donald Tripp wrote:
>> I have a node in our cluster, running SL43, that all of a sudden is
>> refusing to boot. It boots from either PXE or hard drive, but fails at
>> "freeing unused kernel memory".  Any ideas? I tried re-seating all the
>> cards in the machine, as well as the memory, and removed the cmos
>> battery to clear that.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> - Don
>
> Is it having it's output redirected to a console server?
Yes

> And/or have you waited for a long time for it to finish?

No
> And/or have you actually run a memory check on the memory?

No :-(

I know its not the disk, as I swapped out one from an identical node,
and it failed at the same point. I'll let it sit for a while and see
what happens.
>
> One of the problems we've had is that people are looking at a video
> monitor, when everything is actually going towards the serial output.
> That "freeing unused kernel memory" is often where it switches to
> sending the output to both, to just sending it to the serial console
> output.  And if there is something wrong with the disk, where it's
> sitting there waiting for something, then it never comes out.
>
> Another thing that's happened is that it sit's there on "freeing
> unused kernel memory" and I don't have time for it for one reason or
> another, leave it, come back an hour or two later, and it's booted.  I
> have to admit, I've never investigated why.  (Hey, I was too busy to
> look at it before, I was still too busy and just grateful it finished.)
>
> And third, doing a memory check is always good to do when you have any
> questions about memory.  On all the S.L. 4.x installer CD's there is
> memtest86, I'm not positive about which version.  Just boot up one of
> those CD's, and at the bootup screen type in memtest86 and check your
> memory.
>
> Troy