AIX

Good afternoon,

I'm currently working on an IBM 9110-510, with an AIX 6.1 on it.

Currently, I've put an HyperTerminal on the machine vty0. Folowing the procedure given by a support guy(§details), I'm able to get to the AIX banner

Code:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Welcome to AIX.
                       boot image timestamp: 11:15 03/02
                 The current time and date: 12:05:47 04/01/2009
        processor count: 1;  memory size: 880MB;  kernel size: 26367045
    boot device: /pci@800000020000002/pci@2,4/pci1069,b166@1/scsi@0/sd@5:2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But nothing happens after this step. On the LED attached to the power on button I can read 0c46, which corresponds to a "Normal installation processing".

I have not changed the network cable through which the machine is connected to the network since at least one month, and this is the first time I get on this problem.

I have attached the complete boot log (ie. the messages I'm getting on the serial port).

I do not know how the AIX system boot process is supposed to work, but I'm willing to learn more about it.

§details:
-put a null modem cable on the 1st serial port of the machine
-reboot the machine
-press'd enter
-logged in
-select the boot type and the boot device
-wait
>>> only the "Welcome to AIX" banner is printed. No kernel boot logs. The LED is stuck on the 0c46 message.


Update: the complete serial port log is available on http://nilleb.com/pub/boot-log.zip

insert the aix installation cd (or use a nim server), start maintenance mode, choose access rootvg before filesystems are mounted

run fsck on all filesystems in rootvg, if not done automatically

type exit, then all filesystems will mount


run bootlist -m normal -o to see the boot device priority

change to your hdisk if not set

# bootlist -m normal hdisk0 hdisk1
for example

run bosboot -a ( or -a -d and specify your hdisk(s) with hd5 boot logical volume) on it



check /etc/filesystems, and reboot



thats a standard procedure I would do before doing excessive troubleshooting

thanks funksen,

I cannot apply the solution you proposed. This is a rented machine, the rental service didn't give us neither the OS CDs, nor a NIM server address...

somebody does know why such an issue can happen? I have been able to boot once this morning under these conditions, and the network stack wasn't working anymore.

yesterday we have tried to use a vty to send data to a rs232 modem, and we failed to do this. luckily, we haven't disabled the login on the vty0..

the kind of the used cable already corresponds. anyway, we have built one new cable with the schema you've given, and the result is always the same.

nothing after the OS "Welcome to AIX" banner.

Hmm, try booting to SMS, option4 I think is to select the console, select the console, exit and continue the boot, what do you get then?

What is the history of the machine? is it now, or was it ever connected to an HMC?

Does the op panel show HMC=0 or HMC=1?

Seemingly, the filesystem is the responsible of the kernel load failure. A number of binaries in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin have currently a size of 0. I suppose that this same reason is preventing us from completing the boot of the system 7 of 8 times. Among the 0 bytes files, ifconfig is included.

in this case, the only way to proceed (AFAIK) is to reinstall the system from scratch or substitute the missing files with a backup copy of the same files.

we haven't a clue about the reason of the filesystem failure, even if we suppose that the responsible is a power shortage.