[SunHELP] Could not bring up system due to utmpx problem

Bret Adams bret at fabrikant.com
Tue Sep 23 09:18:06 CDT 2003


David:

I am going to assume this is a Sparc system.  When you are starting up and 
after the hardware banner, when it is running its RAM check hit
STOP-A on the keyboard at the same time.  You must do this before it is 
booting into the operating and you will get the ok prompt.

As one of the other guys said you must boot off of the cdrom into single 
user mode to fsck you main partition.  Even booting into single user mode 
without the CDROM will not let you mount a bad root partition.

Bret

At 12:54 PM 9/22/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>I am running solaris8, I just reboot my system after changing IP address
>and the system could not come up as it complains it could not write to
>the file /var/adm/utmpx as shown below.  I entered into system
>maintenance mode to attempt fixing utmpx file using VI to edit the file
>but it does not let me save it, it told me the file is read only.
>Please help me to fix the problem as it is critical.
>
>Thanks,
>David
>
>
>Boot device: disk  File and args:
>SunOS Release 5.8 Version Generic_108528-14 64-bit
>Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
>configuring IPv4 interfaces: hme0.
>
>INIT: Cannot create /var/adm/utmpx
>
>INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:"  "
>
>INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:"  "
>
>INIT: SINGLE USER MODE
>
>Type control-d to proceed with normal startup,
>(or give root password for system maintenance):
>_______________________________________________
>SunHELP maillist  -  SunHELP at sunhelp.org
>http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/sunhelp



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