# Gentoo hangs at boot time ... [Solved]

## Mehrius

So the kernel is 2.6.11-gentoo-r3 but I also got 2.6.12-gentoo-r4 and no change

The whole boot process stop for about 20 secs at a line that says :

ide1 at 0x177-0x177,0x376 on irq15

and then boots up as if nothing happened .... I used other linux distros and didn't get this so it's not a real hardware error...

please post anything that u think might be usefull.....Last edited by Mehrius on Sun Jul 17, 2005 6:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## NeddySeagoon

Mehrius,

Do you use ide1 at all?

Thats /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd. If not trun it off.

The driver is waiting for a timeout if there is nothing there.

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## Mehrius

I have no idea what that ide1 is for ....

Can you tell me how I can find out what uses it or how to disable it ????

Thanks for the reply...

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## NeddySeagoon

Mehrius,

The kernel checks for a number of Iintegrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interfaces to see if they hve hard drives or CD-ROMS (or DVDs) attached as it starts. They are known as ide0 (the first one) ide1 and so on. 

```
dmesg | grep IDE
```

Will show you what your kernel did.

All modern motherboards provide ide0 and ide1. ide0 is the interface for /dev/hda and /dev/hdb

ide1 is the interface for /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd. The pattern continues.

You may not have any devices on your ide1 interface (/dev/hdc and /dev/hdd) in which case the kernel can take a long time to detect that fact, which is the pause in boot up you see. That ide2 and later are not fitted is much easier to detect.

If you do not have /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd, do

```
ls /dev/hd?
```

you can tell the kernel not to look at ide1 by adding 

```
ide1=noprobe
```

to the end of your kernel line in /boot/grub/grub.conf.

If you have one drive but not the other on ide1, use

```
hdx=noprobe
```

instead. Change the x to the letter of the absent drive.

Its documented in  /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ide.txt

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## Mehrius

Thank you for the reply .... I thought it will solve it but :

I run ide1=noprobe .... it just hangs at ide0 now stays on it for 20 secs and goes on ...

If I run ide0=noprobe I get a kernel panic (quite normal as my hda isn't loaded anymore)

If i run hdb=noprobe and hdd=noprobe it still hangs at ide1 .............

So maybe it's not something from the ide ??? but what is it then????????

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## NeddySeagoon

Mehrius,

The 2.6.12 kernel has a option to put timestamps on messages.

Its enabled in make menuconfig under Kernel hacking at Show timing information on printks.

Turn that on, rebuild your kernel, then post your dmesg.

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## Mehrius

this is my timestamped dmesg: 

[   19.719866] Probing IDE interface ide0...

[   19.764685] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0

[   19.983834] hda: TOSHIBA MK6021GAS, ATA DISK drive

[   20.201777] input: PS/2 Generic Mouse on isa0060/serio1

[   20.596065] ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

[   20.596191] Probing IDE interface ide1...

[   21.268429] hdc: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-820S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

[   21.880805] ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15

[   21.881178] Probing IDE interface ide2...

[   22.393780] Probing IDE interface ide3...

[   22.907018] Probing IDE interface ide4...

[   57.925279] ide4: Wait for ready failed before probe !

[   58.435521] Probing IDE interface ide5...

[   58.948852] hda: max request size: 128KiB

[   59.349363] hda: 117210240 sectors (60011 MB), CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)

[   59.349509] hda: cache flushes supported

[   59.349628]  hda: hda1 hda2 hda3

[   59.364197] hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM DVD-R-RAM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)

[   59.364319] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20

I think this is the relevant part and you can clearly see that it takes a LONG time for the system to probe ide4 but when I boot I just see ide1 at 0x170-0x177 

I'll try boting with ide4=noprobe .......

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## Mehrius

IT WORKS !!!!

Thank you to everybody that posted to this thread !!!! specially to NeddySeagoon ....

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## trossachs

Hey guys, what can I add at the end of the grub line to prevent a service from running? Apache2 has hung there and will not get passed that I can get into the server. Even if I select "single" mode, the system still runs the services to get to that prompt. Pls help, teh box has been down for some 12 hours now!!!!  :Crying or Very sad: 

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## NeddySeagoon

JulesF,

Boot with the liveCD,

mount your partitions

chroot

the run 

rc-update apache2 del

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## trossachs

Thanks NS. I couldnt find my boot cd previously but a mate has just burned me a fresh copy so I have changed rc-update. Is it /etc/innitab I have to change to havr the system boot up with the CLS login? At the moment, when it boots back up it changes to the GUI login and because I do not have "X" installed it hangs on the GUI login screen..

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## NeddySeagoon

JulesF,

Its rc-update xdm del you need this time

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## trossachs

Cheers. The system now hangs on xinetd. I have had to take out, spamd, local and usermin to get this far. Do I take it that the server is now broken? All this because someone else was installing VHCS, via SSH, in my absence!  :Crying or Very sad:  This looks more and more like a reinstallation job. I cannot get into the box to check where the logs are at. I can't even mail the guy in the States who caused all this as the mail server is down. 

Luckily I have MX rercords for each of my domains after the last failiure.

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## NeddySeagoon

JulesF,

Hmm. xinitd is another service started by rc-update. You know how to fix that.

I could say 3rd time lucky :) but run rc-update -s  and see what else looks new.

Shift and pageup together allow you to scroll back on the console.

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## trossachs

Hey NS, it would appear that it does not matter what I take out of rc-update, the system will simply hang at the one previously. It hangs at Webmin now which I installed about two weeks ago even thought this has got [ok] next to it.

I think this may be the time nearing "disaster recovery."  I dont suppose there is a way that I could rebuild Gentoo without having to scrap the previous install? This is going to cost me big as it is a production server.

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## trossachs

A lot of these errors on screen:

```
"init: Id "nc" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes."

"init: Id "c1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes."

"init: Id "c2" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes."

"init: Id "c3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes."

"init: Id "c4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes."

"No more processes available for this runlevel."
```

Could this "nc" be something installed that is spawing all this? He wa sinstalled VHCS which is an eCommerce package.

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## NeddySeagoon

JulesF,

That respawning too fast is a well known problem.

I think it relates to ptys and the lack of them. 

Have you been compiling your kernel recently ?

Or has someone else been doing it for you?

Check the compile time stamp in

```
uname -a
```

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