Hello:

Hope someone can help. Yesterday we did a mksysb backup of one of our AIX boxes and now the server is hanging at "Multi-User initialization completed" prompt.

Can someone help in troubleshooting this error? If you need more info please just let me know what you need. I'm not that familiar with AIX. I can tell you that it's v5.2

A long time since I booted and maintained a aix box...
I would see since it booted and got to multi user level, some corruption or something added since last reboot in /etc/inittab:
Boot in single user and then you could try to edit the file and comment out all lines after single user and try line by line after.
Isnt there a /etc/rc.log file?

I looked in the inittab file for the lines relating to "Single User Mode" but I couldn't see it. Can you be a little more specific as to where it is? Also, there is not /etc/rc.log file. At least not on this particular box.

Anyone else can chime in?

I found an article online and talked about adding ',clocal' to the end of a couple tty lines. I did this and rebooted, but still the same problem. I would really like to get this fixed.

Thanks.

There is one thing that puzzles me:
I dont see what link there is between the mksysb generation and the message which is displayed where?
If on console, what do you see? can you log in? if so what makes you think it is hung?
It could be network services not working (hardware issue?)
type errpt -a|more and see if there are information on what is going on

Hi,

The mksysb creation failed with an error of suggesting that the process ran out of memory.

I'm using the console and no I cannot log in. It never gets to the point to log in. The boot stops at "Multi-User initialization completed". We left it there over night and came back the next morning and it was still there. I can boot into single user mode and such.

As far as the Error Log, this is the only real error I saw:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LABEL: JFS_FS_FRAGMENTED
IDENTIFIER: 5DFED6F1

Date/Time: Fri Nov 14 14:00:09 EST 2008
Sequence Number: 2147
Machine Id: 00CDE13F4C00
Node Id: 00CDE13F4C00
Class: O
Type: INFO
Resource Name: SYSPFS

Description
UNABLE TO ALLOCATE SPACE IN FILE SYSTEM

Probable Causes
FILE SYSTEM FREE SPACE FRAGMENTED

Recommended Actions
CONSOLIDATE FREE SPACE USING DEFRAGFS UTILITY

Detail Data
MAJOR/MINOR DEVICE NUMBER
000A 0006
FILE SYSTEM DEVICE AND MOUNT POINT
/dev/hd9var, /var
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ha! This is quite simple to solve: your "/var" filesystem (/dev/hd9var) is full and AIX systems dislike this state of affairs that much they usually refuse to boot.

Boot in single-user mode (or even in service mode), mount the rootvg and make some space available in /var. This should do the trick.

I hope this helps.

bakunin