On 09/13/2011 12:21 PM, Paul Jochum wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> On a SUN x4150 (that previously ran SL 5x fine), I have tried installing
> SL 6 (and 6.1 and 6.x).  For each of my SL 6 installations, the system
> will hang during the boot at "Starting system logger        [   OK   ],
> and not accept any keyboard input (I can't do a CNTL-ALT-F2, for
> example, to bring up another console and see what is wrong).
>
> Scenario:
>
> New install, either through the GUI for from Kickstart.
> If I select option "minimal", then the system boots fine.  However, if I
> select an option with a GUI (like "Virtualization"), then I run into
> this problem.
>
> Any suggestions on what to check?
>
> thanks,
>
> Paul Jochum
> paul.jochum @ alcatel-lucent.com

Hi Paul,

This one sounds tough.  I'm not too sure I know how troubleshoot this 
one..... but I have a few guesses.

If I were to guess, I'd aim towards plymoth simply because, like the 
system logger, it starts early in the boot process, but it operates a 
bit differently when an X server is installed.

You might try removing    rhgb    from the kernel boot line (in grub 
itself or /boot/grub/menu.lst) in the more massive install and see if 
that helps.

You could also try adding     vga=791   to the kernel boot line and see 
if that gets you anywhere.

Removing    quiet    from the boot line has sometimes provided hints 
where the system hangs at boot (though this was mostly back in the early 
days of Linux wireless where the kernel would hickup a bit when those 
modules got loaded).

Sadly with it failing so early in the boot process the VTTYs wont be 
setup yet, so its a bit hard to diagnose the problem..... I've found 
NUMLOCK and CAPSLOCK to be helpful in seeing if the system has locked up 
(these days ), and SCROLLLOCK should let you use PageUP to look at the 
text that went zooming past to see if anything interesting is afoot.


Odds are I'm on the completely wrong track here, but this is at least 
some place to start.

Pat

-- 
Pat Riehecky
Scientific Linux Developer