SUMMARY: Hardware problem(s)

From: Rasana P. Atreya (Rasana.Atreya@library.ucsf.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 29 1996 - 13:40:33 CST


Hi!

Thanks to:

From: Marina.Daniels@ccd.tas.gov.au (Marina Daniels)
From: stern@sunrise.east.sun.com (Hal Stern - Distinguished Systems Engineer)
From: Casper Dik <casper@holland.sun.com>
From: Michael Neef <neef@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
From: Fedor Gnuchev <qwe@ht.eimb.rssi.ru>
From: fuad@concorde.com (Fuad )

My original post, and the responses (with a few of my comments) follow.
Rasana

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Hi!
>
>I have Solaris 2.5 on a Sparc 2. For no apparant reason one or more of my windows (I
>use openwin 3.5) seem to freeze, or really, really slow down.
>
>When I reboot the machine (to get rid of the sluggishness), I get the following:
>INIT: failed write of utmpx entry: "s6"
>INIT: failed write of utmpx entry: "rb"
>
>Anyone know what's going on?
>
>Thanks,
>Rasana
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Marina.Daniels@ccd.tas.gov.au (Marina Daniels)
>
> It looks like it's not able to write to /var/adm/utmpx
>or /var/adm/utmp when user 's6' or 'rb' are logging in
>
>- these files are used by the system for user and accounting information-
>for example, whey you type "who" to see who is currently using your system it
>looks at /var/adm/utmp and works it out from there
>
>read "man utmp"
>
>Maybe you've run out of space in /var?

Will check the next time.

>Or either or both /var/adm/utmp and /var/adm/utmpx have been accidently removed?
>Or they have the wrong permissions?
>
-rw-r--r-- 1 root bin 576 Mar 28 14:52 /var/adm/utmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root bin 5952 Mar 28 14:52 /var/adm/utmpx

>marina
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: stern@sunrise.east.sun.com (Hal Stern - Distinguished Systems Engineer)
>
>almost sounds like you're running a getty on a terminal/serial
>port with nothing plugged in, and you're generating tons of
>interrupts/noise.
>
>what does "vmstat -i" show you -- anything happening on the zs devices?
>

Doesn't seem like it.

helios-100-> vmstat -i
interrupt total rate
--------------------------------
clock 8276255 100
fdc0 10 0
--------------------------------
Total 8276265 100

>--hal
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Casper Dik <casper@holland.sun.com>
>
>This is "normal" if you have a seperate /var partition. The utmpx entries
>live on /var and after unmounting or before mounting /var, the update
>cannot be made.

I do have it on a separate partition.

>
>Have you checked your kernel memory consumption (echo kmastat| crash)

I took a look at this. Lots of interesting info. It would be even better if I knew
what to do with all this wonderful data! ;)

>and your swap space consumptiuon when your machine becomes sliggish?

I did swap -s, swap -l and also did wsinfo. They do not show any problems.
>
>Casper
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Michael Neef <neef@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
>
>I assume you have /var as a separate partition. The system wants to update
>/var/adm/utmpx which fails because /var is already unmounted. This causes the
>messages from init which are more or less harmless.
>
>Sorry, I can't say anything to the problem with freezing windows.
>--
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Fedor Gnuchev <qwe@ht.eimb.rssi.ru>
>
>Dear Rasana P. Atreya,
>regarding
>INIT: failed write of utmpx entry: "s6"
>the answer is you have /var on separate fs and it is unmounted before
>init writes to utmpx. That's harmless.
>
>
>With best regards
>
>Fedor Gnuchev
>(hm, or Ted - in this English-typing world...)
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: fuad@concorde.com (Fuad )
>
> Bug Id: 1185668
> Category: utility
> Subcategory: other
> State: accepted
> Release summary: 5.4, sol2.4_hw11_94, s494_fcs, s495_15
> Synopsis: INIT failed write utmpx entry "s0" and "fw" on shutdown on SS5 and SS10
> Integrated in releases:
> Patch id:
> Description:
>david.bohman@east
> INIT failed to write utmpx entry "s0" and "fw" when /var is on a
>separate partition and a floppy drive is not installed in the system.
>
> Doing a "shutdown -y -g0 -i0" on a SPARCstation 5, running Solaris
>2.4.1 (HW 11/94), without a floppy drive, and /var a separate partition, the
>following messages are displayed.
>
> INIT: failed write of utmpx entry : "s0"
>
> INIT: failed write of utmpx entry : "fw"
>
> The INIT shutdown messages seem to always occur if sundiag was run on
>the system before doing the shutdown. The shutdown messages do NOT always occur
>if the system is just booted and then a shutdown is performed.
>
> These messages could NOT be recreated on the SPARCstation 5 system
>when /var was a directory under the root partition, or a floppy disk drive
>was installed in the system.
>
> These messages were also recreated on a SS10 with /var on a separate
>partition, and the floppy drive was disconnected from the system. Again
>the messages could not be recreated if /var was a directory under the
>root partition, or if the floppy drive was installed.
>
> These same INIT shutdown messages have also been seen on a Perigee
>(SS4) when doing a unconfig. Again on this system did not have a floppy drive
>installed and /var was on a separate partition.
>
>[ 27.Oct.95 mcfadden ]
>Another customer adds that this problem happens when running the
>sys-unconfig command.
>
> sys-unconfig generates:
> The system is down.
>
> INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:"s0"
>
> INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:"fw"
> syncing file systems... [7] [4] done
>
>Which is consistent because sys-unconfig also
>does a system shutdown.
> Work around:
>To prevent the messages (although you don't get the entries in
>your log) you can do the following:
>
>boot single user
>umount /var
>mkdir /var/adm
>touch /var/adm/utmpx
>
>then you can reboot, or mount /var and continue the boot.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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