Aragorn wrote:

>You must also keep in mind that GNU/Linux is a UNIX clone, and UNIX systems
>are normally not intended to be shut down the way a Windows PC is shut
>down. The UNIX architecture was basically designed to run 24/7, and so
>reboots are rare - you'd typically only need it to start a newly installed
>kernel, or after a hardware failure or a power outage (if your system is
>not on a UPS or the power outage exceeds the capacity of the UPS).

My laptop goes on and off several times a day with no problems. And in
an industrial or office setting, when you're recovering from a power
outage, that's a bad time to discover that you've got machines with
boot-up problems. PCs should be switched off at night as a minimum for
reduction of power consumption and fire risk. If a server has to be left
on 24/7 for access, then it's a good idea to schedule a reboot at a slack
time as a maintenance check every quarter or so.

--
Dave Farrance

Chris Taylor wrote:

> herman.viaene@thuis.be wrote:
>> Chris Taylor wrote:
>>
>>> Chris Taylor wrote:
>>>> hi I have mandriva 2008.0 free
>>>> When it boots not it gets to Starting HAL DEAMON: [OK]
>>>> Then it just hangs any help please
>>>> Please if you need more info please ask and I will do my best to supply
>>>> I'm a newbee to linux
>>> it was working just fine on my desktop I just came in yesterday and only
>>> got to the HAL DEAMON part of startup. duel boots with XP pro
>>> I did remove the hdd and then reinstall in computer sane drive same
>>> place
>>
>> It takes about three minutes waiting time and then it starts, this
>> problem has been discussed about one or two week ago. I had the same
>> problem and it got resolved by running chckconfig as root for messagebus
>> and haldaemon if my memory serves me well.
>>
>> Herman Viaene
> Sorry if this has been discussed before but it is a new problem to me.
>
> "it got resolved by running chckconfig as root for messagebus and
> haldaemon" Sorry I don't understand what your telling me to do?

OK, I just did a search in Google Groups for this newsgroup and found the
thread back as "Automounting no longer works" the solution is given at the
end.
In short
- let the boot process time out on this haldaemon (drink a coffee in the
meantime???)
- Once running, fire up konsole, su as root and give the commands
chkconfig messagebus reset
chkconfig haldaemon reset

then reboot

Herman


--
Veel mensen danken hun goed geweten aan hun slecht geheugen. (G. Bomans)

Lots of people owe their good conscience to their bad memory (G. Bomans)

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:52:54 +0200, herman.viaene@thuis.be wrote:

> OK, I just did a search in Google Groups for this newsgroup and found the
> thread back as "Automounting no longer works" the solution is given at the
> end.
> In short
> - let the boot process time out on this haldaemon (drink a coffee in the
> meantime???)
> - Once running, fire up konsole, su as root and give the commands
> chkconfig messagebus reset
> chkconfig haldaemon reset
>
> then reboot

Or if you have a failsafe boot menu selection, pick it

chkconfig --add messagebus
chkconfig --add haldaemon

exit

Aragorn wrote:
snip
> It is generally considered a Good Idea (tm) to split off the following
> filesystems from the root directory, i.e. to have their contents physically
> live on another partition (on the same or another disk) and to have them
> mounted into the directory tree automatically at boot time.
>
> */boot* = contains kernel images, /initrd/ images and GRUB stages (static)
> */usr* = contains the bulk of multiuser software (static)
> */opt* = contains additional multiuser software (static)
> */home* = contains users' home directories (variable)
> */var* = contains log files, mail spools, printer spools, et al (variable)
> */tmp* = contains sockets (variable, world-writable)
> */srv* = contains shared datafiles (variable, not present on every system)
snip
=======================

Aragorn ,Tnx for the above mini-howto.
Assuming a 100GB Hard Drive(section) available for an (Mandriva) install
,which size would you allocate to each of the above partitions ?
This to get a feel for file system proportions.

TIA for your advice

Frank

> Normally not. If you don't get to see a partitioning tool during
> installation, then Mandriva will most likely just preserve your Windows
> partitions - I presume you have those - and will then create a root
> filesystem and a swap partition.
>
> In order to do any custom partitioning, you'll need to click the button
> labeled /"Advanced"./ Recommended partition sizes are...:
> - /boot : 100 MB
> - / : 250 MB
> - /usr : 8000 MB (for a complete install)
> - /opt : 1000 MB
> - /var : 2000 MB (500 MB for a laptop/PC)
> - /tmp : 200 MB
> - /home : as much as you like
> - /srv : as much as you like - not present on every system
> - swap : depending on your RAM - with 2 GB, 500 MB of swap should be plenty
====================================
Aragorn ....and also David , Tnx for providing partioning sizes , to me
very useful.

Frank

On Tuesday 12 August 2008 12:59, someone identifying as *Highland Ham* wrote
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> It is generally considered a Good Idea (tm) to split off the following
>> filesystems from the root directory, i.e. to have their contents
>> physically live on another partition (on the same or another disk) and to
>> have them mounted into the directory tree automatically at boot time.
>>
>> */boot* = contains kernel images, /initrd/ images and GRUB stages
>> (static)
>> */usr* = contains the bulk of multiuser software (static)
>> */opt* = contains additional multiuser software (static)
>> */home* = contains users' home directories (variable)
>> */var* = contains log files, mail spools, printer spools, et al
>> (variable)
>> */tmp* = contains sockets (variable, world-writable)
>> */srv* = contains shared datafiles (variable, not present on every
>> system)
>
> Aragorn ,Tnx for the above mini-howto.
> Assuming a 100GB Hard Drive(section) available for an (Mandriva) install
> ,which size would you allocate to each of the above partitions ?
> This to get a feel for file system proportions.

Well, the partition sizes mentioned in my other post would still stand
regardless of the hard disk's capacity. However, there may be some
variance depending on what kind of installation it is.

For instance, on a server, you would most likely want */var* to be larger -
say 5 GB or even bigger - and you may also want to split off some of the
subtrees from it. Also on a server, */usr* may be smaller due to the lack
of need for diskspace hogs like KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, et al.

I myself normally also split off */usr/local.* This has less to do with
diskspace as it's usually empty on a fresh install, but it does come in
handy if you're compiling your own applications from sources, because by
having it on a different partition I can leave */usr* itself mounted
read-only.

On my Xen/Gentoo system, I also have */usr/src* and */usr/portage* on
separate filesystems, because with Gentoo these directories are usually
more of a dynamic nature than */usr* itself.

However, one thing to keep in mind is the amount of partitions you can have
per hard disk. I should actually say "per what the kernel sees as being
one hard disk", because if you have a hardware RAID setup, then the
operating system will always see the entire array as being a single disk -
again: with a true _hardware_ RAID, that is.

PATA (IDE) disks can hold up to 63 partitions, but SAS, SCSI, SATA, USB and
Firewire all use the SCSI protocol and can only hold 15 partitions. This
means that if you want more partitions on a single disk (array), you'll
have to familiarize yourself with logical volume management. As logical
volumes are a higher layer of abstractions, there is virtually no limit as
to how many you can create.

Another thing here is swap sizes. On the machine on which I'm setting up
Xen and Gentoo, I use 2 GB swap partitions for each of the virtual machines
- four in total - while the machine physically has 32 GB of RAM installed.
Just a precaution, but better to be safe than sorry, and I don't like
messing around and moving stuff around after I've already set up the
machine. Instead, I like planning and plotting this kind of thing from
beforehand, so that I can have an orderly and logically organized system.

*/tmp* may be increased to as much as 1 GB on a large system with many
users, and if you keep it on a /tmpfs/ then without a maximum size for it
set in */etc/fstab,* it'll have half the available physical RAM as its
upper limit.

*/srv* is a directory used for the storage of shared data. You can put your
website's HTML files and SQL databases there, and/or a collection
of /.mp3s./ I mention it (and create it) for conformance with the POSIX
standards, but to my knowledge no GNU/Linux distribution ever really
implements it. If they do, then they just create it and leave it empty.
So its size is also site-specific.

I also tend to split off */root* but this is tricky, because it is needed as
the root user's home when booting up in single user maintenance mode, and
at that stage, nothing but the root filesystem itself is mounted. So you
have to make sure that the directory on the root filesystem contains a
duplicate of your root account's environment files, e.g.
*/root/.bash_profile* et al. My personal reason for splitting it off is
that it's written to by /bash/ - for keeping the command history - and that
I want to make the actual root filesystem read-only, which is a very tricky
part all on its own - especially with /dhcp/ - but not quite infeasible.

The root filesystem itself should be kept small on all accounts. Many
people allocate Gigabytes of diskspace to root, and while this is all fine
for as long as you don't start splitting off directories onto other
partitions, it's pretty senseless if it is your plan to do so anyway.

My rationale is that if you're going to take out the time and the trouble to
split off your */home* from the root filesystem, then you might as well do
it all properly and make sure that your system is set up as logically and
securely as needed for your particular situation. It may be a bit more
work, but the result pays off. :-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Chris Taylor wrote:

> Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:
>> Chris Taylor wrote:
>>
>>> hi I have mandriva 2008.0 free
>>> When it boots not it gets to Starting HAL DEAMON: [OK]
>>> Then it just hangs any help please
>>> Please if you need more info please ask and I will do my best to supply
>>> I'm a newbee to linux
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> If you are a newbee, the faster and easy solution is to get the install
>> DVD and reinstall. It will take 20 to 40 mn. Format the root partition to
>> have a clean install (the installer will ask you for it) but DON'T format
>> your home partition. That's it.
>>
>> With bigger experience in Linux, you will be able to know what happened
>> and you will be able to fix it in a more professional way.
>>
>> (As beginners, most of use had to format the root partition at least one
>> time).
> This means I will loose downloaded software and data

If your data and the downloaded software are in your home partition, than no
loose.
If your data are in your root partition, than yes, you will loose it, but I
don't think that your data is in /root or /usr but in /home.

Downloaded software with rpmdrake or manual install? If you used rpmdrake,
than this is part of my time evaluation "take 20 to 40 mn". If not, well,
it's like any other operating system: "do backup" is good.

Why do I tell you to do a fresh install? Because, while you are talking
here, your PC would have been already up and running.

If you want the hard way to fix your current install (and as you have an
Internet access to post here), just search on the net how to fix this kind
of boot issue. You will find better place with COMPLETE explanations of
what to do with all possible solution. Explaining all errors and fix is
like writing a complete recovering book. I don't think anyone have enough
time to reinvent the wheel or post a big and complet help message here,
so... google is your friend . Web search is how we find our documentation
(even when we reply to you or anyone else having issue here).

Sorry, I don't have any link to provide. Your issue can be a bootloader
issue, a kernel issue, an initscripts issue, a initscripts configuration
issue, a hard disk issue, a user manipulation issue, ... It's like having
windows displaying "Booting XP..." than nothing. No way to get to anything
else. How do you recover from that? Well, google/yahoo/msn/docs... and if
no solution works, reinstall. With Linux, you won't loose your data. You
could even backup what is installed with something like:

# rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME}\n" | sort > installed-rpm.txt

And after a fresh install, reinstall the missing application with:

# urpmi $(cat installed-rpm.txt)


Regards and good luck.

Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:
....
> Sorry, I don't have any link to provide. Your issue can be a bootloader
> issue, a kernel issue, an initscripts issue, an initscripts configuration
> issue, a hard disk issue, a user manipulation issue, ... It's like having
> windows displaying "Booting XP..." than nothing. No way to get to anything
> else. How do you recover from that? Well, google/yahoo/msn/docs... and if
> no solution works, reinstall.

Oops, your kernel loads and your initscripts begin with haldaemon so it can
be a kernel issue, an initscripts issue, an initscripts configuration
issue, a hard disk issue, a user manipulation issue, ...

Other people complained here about haldaemon and other initscripts. I guess
you are using 2008.0.

Start the CD installer, go to rescue, mount your partition, cd to the root
of your linux partition, then:

# chroot .
# cd /etc/init.d/
# for i in * ; do chkconfig $i reset ; done
# sync
# exit
# reboot

Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:

> Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:
> ...
>> Sorry, I don't have any link to provide. Your issue can be a bootloader
>> issue, a kernel issue, an initscripts issue, an initscripts configuration
>> issue, a hard disk issue, a user manipulation issue, ... It's like having
>> windows displaying "Booting XP..." than nothing. No way to get to
>> anything else. How do you recover from that? Well,
>> google/yahoo/msn/docs... and if no solution works, reinstall.
>
> Oops, your kernel loads and your initscripts begin with haldaemon so it
> can be a kernel issue, an initscripts issue, an initscripts configuration
> issue, a hard disk issue, a user manipulation issue, ...
>
> Other people complained here about haldaemon and other initscripts. I
> guess you are using 2008.0.
>
> Start the CD installer, go to rescue, mount your partition, cd to the root
> of your linux partition, then:
>

# chroot .
# cd /etc/init.d/
# chkconfig messagebus reset
# chkconfig haldaemon reset
# sync
# exit
# reboot

Amrein-Marie Christophe writes:

>Chris Taylor wrote:

>> Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:
>>> Chris Taylor wrote:
>>>
>>>> hi I have mandriva 2008.0 free
>>>> When it boots not it gets to Starting HAL DEAMON: [OK]
>>>> Then it just hangs any help please
>>>> Please if you need more info please ask and I will do my best to supply
>>>> I'm a newbee to linux
>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> If you are a newbee, the faster and easy solution is to get the install
>>> DVD and reinstall. It will take 20 to 40 mn. Format the root partition to
>>> have a clean install (the installer will ask you for it) but DON'T format
>>> your home partition. That's it.
>>>
>>> With bigger experience in Linux, you will be able to know what happened
>>> and you will be able to fix it in a more professional way.
>>>
>>> (As beginners, most of use had to format the root partition at least one
>>> time).
>> This means I will loose downloaded software and data

>If your data and the downloaded software are in your home partition, than no
>loose.
>If your data are in your root partition, than yes, you will loose it, but I
>don't think that your data is in /root or /usr but in /home.

Since as a newbie, he might have put /home on the root partition, he could
well lose it.


>Downloaded software with rpmdrake or manual install? If you used rpmdrake,
>than this is part of my time evaluation "take 20 to 40 mn". If not, well,
>it's like any other operating system: "do backup" is good.

>Why do I tell you to do a fresh install? Because, while you are talking
>here, your PC would have been already up and running.

>If you want the hard way to fix your current install (and as you have an
>Internet access to post here), just search on the net how to fix this kind
>of boot issue. You will find better place with COMPLETE explanations of
>what to do with all possible solution. Explaining all errors and fix is
>like writing a complete recovering book. I don't think anyone have enough
>time to reinvent the wheel or post a big and complet help message here,
>so... google is your friend . Web search is how we find our documentation
>(even when we reply to you or anyone else having issue here).

>Sorry, I don't have any link to provide. Your issue can be a bootloader
>issue, a kernel issue, an initscripts issue, a initscripts configuration
>issue, a hard disk issue, a user manipulation issue, ... It's like having
>windows displaying "Booting XP..." than nothing. No way to get to anything
>else. How do you recover from that? Well, google/yahoo/msn/docs... and if
>no solution works, reinstall. With Linux, you won't loose your data. You
>could even backup what is installed with something like:

># rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME}\n" | sort > installed-rpm.txt

>And after a fresh install, reinstall the missing application with:

># urpmi $(cat installed-rpm.txt)


>Regards and good luck.

Unruh wrote:
> Since as a newbie, he might have put /home on the root partition, he could
> well lose it.

No. The default Mandriva config is to have "/" and "/home" in two different
partitions + swap. Only way to have only one is to force "/" with the
partition manager at install.