From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ray Olszewski Subject: Re: Read-only File System [/dev/null read only errors] Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 12:24:01 -0800 Message-ID: <44020E61.2050202@comarre.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org Frank wrote: > Our server went down recently. > > According to the hosting provider, this is some of the first errors > it gives, > > ------------ > /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit line xx :/dev/null read only files system > gives more of the same error, It can not read many lines in many > files that it needs to boot up, due to read only > > configuring kernel parameters dup2 bad file descripter > > there are several bad descriptor errors and several /dev/null read > only errors > --------- > > Can someone please assist us on whether this is fixable and if we can > recover our data from the server? > > Any assistance / guidance / pointers are appreciated. Hmmm ... you haven't really posted enough info to get a good, to-the-point answer. So I'll provide a long, probably mediocre, answer instead. If the server were onsite, I'd suggest you boot/init it with a recovery floppy or CD, transfer your data to some other host on your LAN, and then figure out what's going on once you are out of panic mode. Since you reference a "hosting provider", I infer that you do not have physical access to the server, which limits your options. (To what? Can you ask the provider to do anything other than "try it again"?) Anyway, to know what you might do, we need to know more of the basics of your setup. What Linux distro does it run (I'm guessing Slackware, but we shouldn't have to guess about such basic things)? What messages precede the one you've more-or-less ("line xx"? "files system"? surely it didn't actually say these things) quoted above? What kernel are you running, and is it stock or custom? What's the basic hardware setup (hard disks and their partitions are likely to be most interesting here, but RAM is a possibility too)? I have a hunch that there is an earlier error message that you, or your hosting provider, missed, that explains why the /dev/null errors are occurring. My guess is that, for some reason, when the kernel mounts the root partition, it is not mounting a correct /dev directory. What is "dup2"? What other names are associated with the "bad file descriptor" messages, and do any of them have local meaning (e.g., are they disk partitions in /etc/fstab)? Where does the server end up? Does it drop into recovery mode? Does it oops? Does it just hang at some point? If you (or your provider) can get console access, what do these commands report: df uname -a dmesg ls -l /dev/null If this server has not been rebooted in a long time ... is it possible that the default LILO (or GRUB or whatever) boot choice is not the right one? What is the default LILO stanza (or GRUB, or whatever, equivalent)? If the server is not under your physical control, this is going to be tough to troubleshoot. The worst possibility is a hardware problem with your hard disk, because every reboot attempt risks making that worse, lessening the chance that you'll be able to recover your data without incurring the expense of a disk-recovery specialist. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs