Testimonials

LERT rescues box

My box is up. A big thanks to Foo Lim and LERT!

Details:
My box is a Mandrake 7.1 with a SCSI HD. I killed a logrotate churn and the box failed on the subsequent boot. I used the Mandrake 7.1 install disk as a rescue disk, apparently was able to load the aic7xxx driver, but could not mount sda#. modprobe was available, but insmod could not be run (honest).

Bottom line: we could not rescue with the mandrake disk. Fortunately, Foo brought a Redhat 6.2 disk, which allowed him to boot and mount. As expected, the problem resided in /var/log (which resides in the root partition with a default install, yes I know better, I plead temporary insanity). The mail and news subdirectories were ENORMOUSLY full. We spent most of the LERT call watching rm work. Afterwards, the reboot went fine.

Lessons learned:

1. Apply the logrotate churn fix.
2. Never ever again place /var in the root partition.
3. Use /proc/interrupts and dmesg, they are friends.
4. insmod, modprobe, and autoprobe perform different tasks.
5. Keep a Redhat 6.2 install CD handy.

   Again, much thanks to Foo, Pete, Mark, ME, Rod, Jeff, and the whole LERT team. LUGOD has consistently proven itself as not only a fun club, but also a valuable resource.