From: drew@cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: Improper shutdown -- cannot login Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1993 10:28:49 GMT
In article <CAvAGM.Kn@cs.vu.nl> irvdwijk@cs.vu.nl (Wijk van der IR) writes:
>GALBRAITH PAUL DAVID (galbrai@ecf.toronto.edu) wrote:
>: For a while, I had Linux up and running without any apparent problems
>: (except a warning about an unchecked file system at bootup). After
>: tangling with X11, I had to restart the system without shutting down
>: properly, and now am unable to login. When I enter 'root', I'm told
>: that there is some is some problem accessing utmp or something similar,
>: and something about improper sh level. The only thing I could think to
>: do was run 'e2fsck /dev/hda1' which does not report any problems (I ran
>: this by booting from the install disk and mounting /dev/hda1). Is there
>: anything I can do to get the system back in working order?
>
>: (Please be verbose! On a scale of 0 to idiot, I rank closer to 0...)
>The only thing I can think of is that you somehow erased your /etc/utmp,
>or made it unreadable in someway. Login requires an entry LOGIN in the
>utmp. Try copying your utmp from som bootfloppy to your HD. If this doesn't
>work, I don't know what's wrong.
This is why you should have something like
> /etc/utmp
in your /etc/rc. That way, /etc/utmp will allways exist, and will
never be corrupt when the system reboots.
-- Boycott USL/Novell for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit. | Condemn Colorado for Amendment Two. | Drew Eckhardt Use Linux, the fast, flexible, and free 386 unix | drew@cs.Colorado.EDU Will administer Unix for food |