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can anybody help with these unix errors.

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6 replies

by muyiwaa

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I have a voice server running on UNIX, it restarted and i got the following message

INIT: Cannot create /var/adm/utmp or /var/adm/utmpx
INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:" "
INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:" "
INIT: SINGLE USER MODE

Please tell me what do i do? I am a complete novice when it comes to unix, so i would really apreciate a step by step instruction.

6 replies

by jaqui

INIT: Cannot create /var/adm/utmp or /var/adm/utmpx
INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:" "
INIT: failed write of utmpx entry:" "
says that the voice server does not have write permissions on the directory /var/adm
use chown to change the owner of that folder to the user that is running the voice server.

INIT: SINGLE USER MODE

says that you are not running in a network enabled environment.
after using chown. use "init 3"

this is a command prompt, network enabled runlevel.

for specific command syntax
man chown
man init

man calling the manual pages for the tools.

use the | to pipe them through a text reader, like more, or less.
man chown | less
this will page the output.

by jaqui

runlevel one, single user mode.

as soon as it stops posting to the screen during boot this is the command prompt.
in single user mode, the login doesn't happen, as this is failsafe mode to edit fatal config errors.

the system configuration files that put a specific prompt are not active.
the network config is not active.

you have bare bones, no path console session.
login not possible, as the only user is root, and the only apps available are in /bin
( always available )
by specifying /sbin you can fsk the entire drive, but you have to unmount any partition before you can fsk it.

so:
/sbin umount /var
/sbin fsk dev/hdXN
where X is a,b,c,d..
and N is partition number.

if you get command sysntax errors, then:
man umount | more
man fsk | more
( man is in bin, so it works always. )

by muyiwaa

Thanks for the tips, but my major problem now is that i dont even get any prompt to enter a command.I would really appreciate if you can tell me how to get to the command prompt.
The flavour of unix is (Unix system V Release 4.2 verson 1.1.2)

Thanks

by martin simons

Usually these errors come after a crash when the system is not able to fsck the /var file system. That you do not get a prompt to enter the password is somewhat unsettling, but lets continue with this. Boot the machine from cd or network (if you don't get a prompt here there is nothing else you can do but this) then run an fsck on all partitions on your root disk, then try booting again.

by sunny_pcs

for this problem , first of all log in single user mode.from # prompt give the following command-

# >> utmp
# >> utmpx

This will solve the problem.

by sunny_pcs

for this problem , first of all log in single user mode.from # prompt give the following command-

# >> utmp
# >> utmpx

This will solve the problem.

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