Re: Restart problems

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Totoro" == Totoro  <riley@example.com> writes:

    Totoro> I've been having a wierd problem lately. Don't know if
    Totoro> it's due to switching to Redhat 4 or not. Anyhow, whenever
    Totoro> I shutdown the system, it never completely shuts down and
    Totoro> cycles back.

I had a similar problem for a while once I shifted to a kernel greater
than 2.0.0.  Actually I still have it, but I have a workaround.

What happened was this.  I have a very crude statistical analysis
program for my HTTP logs.  This log is now over 15MB :-P but I have
lots of disk space at the moment.  For some reason (I think having to
do with a memory leak and exhaustion of virtual memory) this program
would try to access a nonexistent partition on one of my SCSI drives,
causing a file system error.  Again for reasons I didn't understand, 
this results in an inability to sync.  Exiting processes would hang as 
zombies, and programs like `df' would just hang.

    Totoro> I'm always left with the BIOS screen showing
    Totoro> memory available and the big blue IBM (I sense thoughts of
    Totoro> crude remarks about IBM out there...).  It won't come back
    Totoro> and restart from "shutdown -r now" or anything.

This doesn't sound like your problem, though.  First, I never got to
the BIOS screen.  Second you don't mention a fsck at every reboot (the 
inevitable consequence of shutting down without completing a sync).

It sounds like you're not getting to the boot loader, but are getting
to reboot.  So I would guess there's something screwy about your BIOS
or the MBR.  But one can't rule out problems with the kernel,
shutdown(8), and reboot(8).  Have you checked your BIOS CMOS settings?

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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