SCO

sco 5.0.7

my ancient sco unix system hangs on booting gives me the following error message

Code:

exit-/etc/init (PID1) DIED, STATUS 0X0000009F

had trouble shutting down last night would give me login prompt but would not let me into root with password.- I powered off probably compounded the issues. now I get above message during boot.
have the boot disk but do not want to make bigger mess.
bill

Well, i am not an SCO-expert by any stretch but init is the process which starts all other processes in a classical UNIX system. If this process dies (and does so repeatedly) my guess is you are in deep kimchi.

This is actually quite probable: UNIX systems maintain their filesystem information partly in memory, which is why they take it as an insult to switch them off without properly shutting them down. Most probable you have indeed made things worse.

My suggetion is to start from the boot disk and do a "file system check" (or "fsck") on your disk. You might also want to hold your backups ready for restore/reinstallation. You do have backups, don't you?

Once this is done you can start investigating why the correct root-pw won't gain you entrance, but this is a (at first glance) unrelated story.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

have my boot disk out was little shy with using fsck disk ( I know lots of different options)
guess I cannot screw anything up worse! guess my luck may have run out - using this system for over 20 years on various platforms.

You say that you have a boot disk? Does the system have a floppy drive?

Usually, SCO systems have a 'boot' disk and a 'root' disk floppy. You start with a boot disk and then it prompts you to change to the root disk.

Initially I would definitely put the '-n' option on the fsck command to tell it whatever the question is, the answer is 'no'. That will prevent fsck making ANY changes to the root filesystem until you know how much it is damaged.

does have floppy drive which I have never used and do have 'boot' no 'root" disk- tried booting with floppy after powering down - system steps right around the floppy drive though it floopy is showing in setup and is first in the boot sequence - my guess is the drives are on scsci controllers and may not see the floppy- checking my wiring next -do remember switching machines after the hardware had issues - may have led to floppy issue.
thanks!


will use the -n opition as you suggested.

SCO knowledgebase is now here

This might be relevant:

My system panics with "PANIC: exit cannot exec /etc/init (PID 1) status 9."

(Searched for OpenServer 5.0.7 "/etc/init died" on above knowledgebase"

You should be able to boot from CD/DVD and enter "maintenance mode". Then mount your hard disk root filesystem (on /mnt of the CD) and then take a look around.