Hi,

so earlier today I decided to reboot linode (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Disk Image (30464 MB, ext3)) after a problem in php, which turns out to be a bad decision.

after a while, ssh still won't respond to any access, and accessing via Lish gave me these messages:

..
ip_set: protocol 6
IPv4 over IPv4 tunneling driver
GRE over IPv4 demultiplexor driver
GRE over IPv4 tunneling driver
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
xvda: unknown partition table
TCP cubic registered
Initializing XFRM netlink socket
NET: Registered protocol family 10
ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
blkfront: xvdb: barrier: enabled
NET: Registered protocol family 17
NET: Registered protocol family 15
Bridge firewalling registered
Ebtables v2.0 registered
802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8
sctp: Hash tables configured (established 65536 bind 65536)
Registering the dns_resolver key type
Using IPI No-Shortcut mode
registered taskstats version 1
xvdb: unknown partition table
Setting capacity to 532480
xvdb: detected capacity change from 0 to 272629760
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/console/0
md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect
md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
EXT3-fs: barriers not enabled
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs (xvda): mounted filesystem with writeback data mode
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly on device 202:0.
devtmpfs: mounted
Freeing unused kernel memory: 384k freed
Write protecting the kernel text: 5896k
Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 1416k
NX-protecting the kernel data: 3320k
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
/dev/xvda: clean, 6214613/6900096 files, 1829343/7798784 blocks


.. with no usual prompt for login. And it stays like this with no end and no signs of progress. I tried issuing reboots via Lish and the Linode panel but after reboots it is stuck at the same messages. (different number of cleaned file and blocks, though, but not necessarily increasing)

Have somebody run into this problem before? Any idea for a solution?


Thanks.

Turns out that it was a problem with getty not starting.

I followed bltc 's reply at this thread and finally got it working fine again.
viewtopic.php?t=7481

to be exact, the steps that I took are:

1. Have linode boot into Rescue Mode
http://library.linode.com/troubleshooti ... escue-mode
The next steps are done via Lish.

2. Mount the disk image. (mine is /dev/xvda , this is probably true in most cases imo)
root@hvc0: mount /dev/xvda

3. The file you need to edit, the hvc0.conf will be now available at
/media/xvda/etc/init/hvc0.conf

it should be looking like this:

# hvc0 - getty 
# 
# This service maintains a getty on hvc0 from the point the system is 
# started until it is shut down again. 

start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345] 
stop on runlevel [!2345] 

respawn 
exec /sbin/getty -8 38400 hvc0 

update it as follow:

start on (virtual-filesystems 
or starting rcS 
or starting mountall-shell) 

stop on runlevel 0 
stop on runlevel 1 
stop on runlevel 6 

respawn 
exec /sbin/getty 38400 hvc0

4. Reboot
root@hvc0: reboot


Feel free to ask or add anything.
Thanks to bltc for starting and responding in that thread and akerl from Linode for staying and helping me find solutions for hours.