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Power failure on Linux Redhat Enterprise

Hi experts,

There was a mojor power failure in our building and our Redhat Enterprise server 4 is not coming up now.
I get the following message

I could not start the X server ( your graphical environment) due to some internal error.
Please contact your system administrator or check your syslog to diagnose.
In the meantime time this display will be disabled. Please restart gdm when the problem is corrected.

and when i hit Ok

On a screen i see these

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 3)
Kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2.EL on an i686

Mailpc69 login: /bin/unicode_start: line 15: 3516 Segmentation fault kbd_mode -u
/bin/unicode_start: line 21: 3522 Broken pipe dumpkeys
3523 Segmentation fault | loadkeys --unicode
Bad character height 0

after this when i hit enter, it takes me to the

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 3)
Kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2.EL on an i686

Mailpc69 login:

at this point i cannot login to my machine.

I appreciate any help on this issue.

thanks

ravenpl

Maybe not really helpful, but grab RH4.4 CDs and upgrade the system.
Some binaries were broken and need to be replaced from fresh copy.

cakirfatih

ASKER

can you provide some more information on how to do this?
i used to have sendmail running on this machine,do you think upgrading the system will make it work again?

thanks

jianmcgowan

On submarines (so I'm told) they have a brass bar in front of the control system and the operators are trained to "grab the bar" in an emergency. This is to stop them from flipping switches and turning dials in an attempt to fix a crisis before they understand what is going on, and just make the situation worse. It's a good way to approach computer problems too :-)

In this case, you have a login prompt, what exactly happens when you try to login? Ideally, you would be able to login as root, backup any critical files and check out the logs before doing anything rash.

If you cannot login, then you will need to boot the server from the first redhat cd, and then consider what needs to be saved first. If this is a mail gateway, you may be willing to lose any data but you really want /etc/sendmail.cf, for example. Once you have anything you care about squirreled away, then you can go crazy doing upgrades etc. (though if the problem is a corrupted hard drive, that's not likely to help).

http://www.google.com/search?q=redhat+rhel4+rescue+mode

Hope this helps,
Ian

ravenpl

Grab new RH CDs, boot from first, choose upgrade instead of install.

cakirfatih

ASKER

I am at the rescue mode now, and i am trying to copy the configuration files and mailboxes to a USB drive
when i try to mount it i get an error saying Segmentation Fault.

i also get the same message in some other cases. Is this a hard drive problem?

thanks

jianmcgowan

Ravenpl, if the power outage caused a hard drive failure, how is that going to help? If you're going to stick the first cd in and reboot, why not take a few minutes to type "linux rescue" and look in the logs to see what's going on? You're probably right, and I'm a nervous nelly, but what's the harm in taking a look...

cakirfatih

ASKER

i also initiated the network card on this machine,
is there a way to backup files to another machine in my network?
i have windows machines in my network.

cakirfatih

ASKER

also how can i view the content of files in the shell
vi , pico, sed all are giving segmentation fault message

thanks

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ravenpl

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cakirfatih

ASKER

I used a live CD and backed up the data i needed.

then i try to upgrade the system. at the end of the upgrade I get the below message

Warning: No kernel packages were installed on your system.
Your boot loader configuration will not be changed.

and after i reboot the system, same thing happens in my first post.

i need to find out whether i should use the same system or hard drive to do a new installation.

thanks

Tintin

Given you have Advanced Server, why don't you contact Redhat Support. They are supposed to give you a 4 hour response, which would be potentially a lot quicker than using the EE forums (or perhaps you have experienced the "quality" and "fast" response time of Redhat Support?)

cakirfatih

ASKER

i end up re-installing everything, and i backed up data using live cd

thanks for all the help