As it turned out, the telnet issues was a prelude to much bigger problems.
Although one meber of this list thought it was a hardware problem. Another was
correct in saying that it wasn't. However, the problem has emerged (morphed)
into something more serious.
The PC won't boot now. Fortunately, I backed up my work and went looking for
the problem. Here is what I observed:
This problem came up within 24 hours of performing a complete system update from
one of the Mandrake mirrors. However, this may be a coincidence.
When I booted the machine, the LILO dialog screen came up as usual. If I
selected the standard "linux" or just let the default do the work, the same
result: An immediate reboot. LILO dialog comes up, default, reboot. The cycle
continued.
Not having a working box, I performed an experiment. This is what I did (with
attendant results):
1. Performed a complete reinstall of Mandrake 7.2 (from scratch, including
reformatting the hard disk (I wanted to get rid of CUPS anyway)). Result:
Exact same problem, LILO, select, reboot.
2. Next, I switched distributions and loaded Debian 2.2r1 onto the box. It ran
just fine. No memory problems, no hard disk problems, nothing out of the
ordinary.
3. Next, tried loading Mandrake 7.2 back on. Exact same problem! LILO, select,
reboot cycle. Moreover, I tried to load from a boot floppy. Same problem!
4. Next, I switched yet again to RedHat 6.2. Same result as Debian. Normal
install and stable performance.
Here is the configuration:
Compaq Professional Workstation 8000
Dual Pentium Pro (200 MHz)
128 MB ECC RAM
two 4 GB Segate SCSI HD's (no RAID).
Voodoo3 2000 PCI video card.
The odd thing is that Mandrake ran stable for several weeks before failure
(albeit just after a major update). However, if it was something with the
update, the reinstall should have cleared it up -- but it didn't.
I plan to do some more troubleshooting tonight. I will first try to reload
Mandrake, only this time I will specify GRUB in lieu of LILO.
Next, I will load Mandrake 7.1 and see if I can narrow the problem down to 7.2.
One last thing, since this is an SMP system, and I have to recompile the kernel
for SMP (and I'm not sure about RH 6.2), I will first check out SMP enablement
in RH 6.2 and, if necessary, recompile the kernel for SMP and reboot to see
whether that is causing the problem. Note, however, that upon boot both
processors are initialized (as normal) so I don't think that SMP is a problem.
Any other suggestions?
TIA,
Ron
./.
> I think what you're seeing is output from the "mon" service which checks
> whether particular services are available. If it finds, for instance, that
> telnet isn't responding (i.e., you've turned off that service), then it
> reports a "critical" error. Check "man mon" for details.
>
> You could turn off "mon" in your startup services. Unless you're operating a
> server, you perhaps don't need what it does. That seems preferable to me over
> tuning on services like telnet which are dicey from the security standpoint.
>
> M.
>
> On Monday 01 January 2001 15:15, you wrote:
> > Eh, actually I've seen this myself.
> >
> > It was NOT a hardware problem at all.
> >
> > Rather one of the local services was not "turned on" during installation.
> >
> > I went thru the services list and turned on several daemons and installed
> > the appropriate RPM's for Telnet, etc.
> >
> > Afterwards the message disappeared on the next reboot.
> >
> > It seems to be related to networking setup and affected the X server as
> > well... apparently having something to do with authentication.
> >
> > I'm sorry for not being more specific, but the problem went away so quickly
> > after this that I did not dig any deeper...
> >
> > -JMS
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of civileme
> > Sent: Monday, January 01, 2001 12:35 PM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: [expert] Critical problem
> >
> > On Monday 01 January 2001 17:44, you wrote:
> > > Hi:
> > >
> > > I had hoped never to see this, but I got the following message (when
> > > logged on as root):
> > >
> > > <daemon.crit> mon[1256]: failure for servers telnet 978304853 localhost
> > >
> > > does anyone know what this means.
> >
> > Well, it sounds like Christmas was a little early for the new hardware you
> > will need. Most likely it is memory, but it might be HDD.
> >
> > Civileme
> >
> > > Fortunately, I got rattled and was able to make a backup of all the
> > > data. Now the PC won't boot. It had been having trouble in the boot
> > > process, reverting to level 3 and not starting X (as it should have).
> > > It was from the command line that I was able to back up my files. Now,
> > > she won't boot, even from the boot floppy.
> > >
> > > Does anyone know what the problem could be?
> > >
> > > Ron
> > > ./.
>
> --
> Michael O'Henly
> TENZO Design
>
>
