Problems with Samba, INIT during boot, respawning too fast...

[Bo Larses]

Hi,
I administer a LinuxPPC-server (June 1999, kernel 2.2.6 on a B&W G3) running with Samba 2.0.6 which serves about 10 Windows-clients and Netatalk for a few Mac:s. I am not totally new to Linux, but still bit of a newbie.

Suddenly the Windows-clients couldn´t connect to the Linux server. But Mac/netatalk works perfectly.

I tried to restart Samba through SWAT. The status of smbd shows "running" and nmbd is "not running". It is not possible to change this by clicking on stop/start/restart, nothing happens. Earlier nmbd sometimes stopped for no obvious reason, but could be started again by clicking on "start nmbd" a few times. So there is something wrong here I guess.

Then I rebooted the linux box (for the first time in several months). On startup there was several problems with the file systems, so the whole thing halted at something like this:
------------------
/dev/sdb5 : UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY (e.g.without -a or -p options[FAILED]

*** An error occured during the filesystem check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type ctrl-D for manual startup).   >>
------------------------
So I did run "fsck /dev/sdb5" and there was a lot of faults and fixing (I answered the default "Yes" on every prompt). Then reboot again. It worked a little bit better now, no problems with sdb5, but some checking on the other disks. They came out OK.


But during startup:
------------------------------------------
INIT: version 2.74 booting [FAILED]
----------------------------------------------
(the rest is OK, ant then after linuxconf is started:)
-------------------------------------------
linux_server login: gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
gdm_config_parse: no configuration file: /etc/X11/gdm.conf. Aborting
INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
--------------------------------------------------------------

And the whole thing looped until I pressed Enter and a login prompt came up. Xwindow did not start as it used to before.

Trying to solve the respawning problem I did what they recommend at:

http://www.linuxppc.com/support/updates/product/archive.php3?category=general&subject=respawning-too-fast
---------------------------------
"Boot up the computer, and when it gets to the "Choose your OS" screen, press the delete key. This will stop the boot process.
Delete anything that is in the "More kernel arguments" field. In that field, type in "single". Then click Linux to start Linux.

Linux will boot in single user mode, which is a special maintenance mode. Instead of booting up and displaying a login prompt, it will come to a prompt:
sh-2.0.3#
At this prompt, type: /usr/X11R6/bin/Xautoconfig [Return]

It will look like nothing happened, but the Xautoconfig program actually ran. I t should properly set up your X configuration."
-------------------------------------------

It did not solve the problem, though. When I reboot there is still problems with "INIT: version 2.74 booting [FAILED]" and the "respawning too fast"-thing. But I can login as root and start Xwindow manually thru "startx".
When (in Xwindow) I start a terminal window the prompt is "sh2.03#". Single user mode? Why?

And the most important issue - to get the filesharing thru Samba going - is still to be solved. It is critical that I fix this asap because the company relies on computers working.

I am running out of clues on how to fix all this. Are all these problems connected, and how do I solve them? Any ideas? Thanks.