1.1.0beta1: Interactive Boot Sequence?

[rrnwexec]

Hi,

I did something (silly) and installed ntp to my working system (1.1.0beta1 on 6000). Now every time I boot the Z i get the following messages, then nothing... the system just hangs:

 ntpdate[291]: no servers can be used, exiting

I suspect that this is due to ntp wanting/needing to query ntp servers on the internet. Instead of ntp timing out, it just hangs the whole boot process. Nasty.

Is there a way to boot interactively so I can tell the system not to launch ntp, then go in and remove it?

Failing that, any other suggestions?

thanks in advance,
Randall

[karlto]

Hi,

I did something (silly) and installed ntp to my working system (1.1.0beta1 on 6000). Now every time I boot the Z i get the following messages, then nothing... the system just hangs:

 ntpdate[291]: no servers can be used, exiting

I suspect that this is due to ntp wanting/needing to query ntp servers on the internet. Instead of ntp timing out, it just hangs the whole boot process. Nasty.

Is there a way to boot interactively so I can tell the system not to launch ntp, then go in and remove it?

Failing that, any other suggestions?

thanks in advance,
Randall
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=120549\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

That seems strange - normally it does exit fine. Are you sure it isn't the next command in the script hanging?

If it is ntp, can't you just connect up the Z so it has Internet access to get it booted?

I know of no way to get an interactive boot - normally something like this might be done by passing parameters to the bootloader prompt...

[rrnwexec]

That seems strange - normally it does exit fine. Are you sure it isn't the next command in the script hanging?

If it is ntp, can't you just connect up the Z so it has Internet access to get it booted?

I know of no way to get an interactive boot - normally something like this might be done by passing parameters to the bootloader prompt...
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=120556\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's ntp. Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to connect to the internet as I normally invoke internal wifi manually using a script to change my ESSID and WEP parameters once the Z is booted up. It doesn't enable my wifi setup by default.

I was hoping there's an escape sequence that can get me into a shell to edit rc.d, or whatever is starting NTP... the boot sequence seems to progress far enough that some shell should be accessible (I hope)... yet I don't know how to get to it.

Cheers,
Randall.

[rrnwexec]

Some other observations:

The last several lines before the boot process hangs are:

Code: [Select]

Starting crond            [OK]
Looking for host time.nist.gov and service ntp
Error : Temporary failure in name resolution
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[283]: can't find host time.nist.gov
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[283]: no servers can be used, exiting
... then it hangs. I've left it for over 30 minutes to see if it will come back to life, but it doesn't. After 5 minutes or so, I noticed that the mail LED starts blinking. Maybe root has mail

Any thoughts?

[Bundabrg]

Couple things. They're mostly shots in the dark and may be wrong, but I'm too tired to double check them right now: -
  - Try 'Ctrl-C'. I think Ctrl is mapped to the calendar key at this time

  - Grab the pdaXrom bootflash images, and boot with them. Then instead of reflashing, choose the option that drops to a terminal, mount your root and remove the offending entry.

  - The above may also be achieved I think by entering the diagnostic boot (remove battery, hold D+B I think, put battery in again)

I think the middle option is the most likely to succeed ;-)

 - Bundabrg

[karlto]

Couple things. They're mostly shots in the dark and may be wrong, but I'm too tired to double check them right now: -
  - Try 'Ctrl-C'. I think Ctrl is mapped to the calendar key at this time

  - Grab the pdaXrom bootflash images, and boot with them. Then instead of reflashing, choose the option that drops to a terminal, mount your root and remove the offending entry.

  - The above may also be achieved I think by entering the diagnostic boot (remove battery, hold D+B I think, put battery in again)

I think the middle option is the most likely to succeed ;-)

 - Bundabrg
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=120576\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Good thought - just like a boot CD. I agree that the first option probably won't work because that's the problem to start with - everything's responding, but until it boots it doesn't accept input.

[rrnwexec]

Thanks Bundabrg and karlto.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, the Z "decided" to boot this morning. I didn't change anything, was planning to do that as soon as it hung once more. I guess it sensed that I was about to crash its party

It came up with the usual error messages at boot:

Code: [Select]

28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[283]: can't find host time.nist.gov
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[283]: no servers can be used, exiting
but this time it recovered after about 5 or 10 seconds.

So, now that I was able to get in and take a look around I noticed that I had installed ntp, ntpd and ntpdate in a strange way...
  ntp was  installed on /
  ntpd was installed on /mnt/card
  ntpdate was installed on /mnt card

Thinking that wouldn't be good, I removed the three packages above and reinstalled all of them to /

The install of ntpd gave me a warning:

Code: [Select]

Installing ntpd ... /etc/rc.d/init.d/ntpd : timezone not configured
Please create a symlink from /etc/localtime to your appropriate /usr/share/zoneinfo file.
so I dropped into the shell and made the following entry..

Code: [Select]

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Pacific /etc/localtime
typed reboot and crossed my fingers...

The reboot worked, but with errors...

Code: [Select]

.
.
.
Loading USB modules:             [  OK  ]
Synchronizing network time: ..........network is down.
Starting network time daemon: ntpd
Starting system message bus:  [  OK  ]
Starting crond:                        [  OK  ]
Looking for host time.nist.gov and service ntp
Error : Temporary failure in name resolution
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[593]: can't find host time.nist.gov
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[593]: no servers can be used, exiting

pdaXrom 1.1.0beta1 "Kathrin"
zaurus login:
Any suggestions on how to:

1) remove the delay after "Synchronizing network time..." (it's approx 10 seconds) ?
2) prevent ntpdate from looking for time.nist.gov at boot?
3) use crond to invoke a time adjustment at some predetermined time after boot, say 15 minutes, but only if there is an internet connection? Essentially, I don't want time checking at boot, only want it later.

Thanks,
Randall.

[karlto]

The reboot worked, but with errors...

Code: [Select]

.
.
.
Loading USB modules:             [  OK  ]
Synchronizing network time: ..........network is down.
Starting network time daemon: ntpd
Starting system message bus:  [  OK  ]
Starting crond:                        [  OK  ]
Looking for host time.nist.gov and service ntp[QUOTE]
Error : Temporary failure in name resolution
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[593]: can't find host time.nist.gov
28 Mar 00:56:37 ntpdate[593]: no servers can be used, exiting

pdaXrom 1.1.0beta1 "Kathrin"
zaurus login:
Any suggestions on how to:

1) remove the delay after "Synchronizing network time..." (it's approx 10 seconds) ?
2) prevent ntpdate from looking for time.nist.gov at boot?
3) use crond to invoke a time adjustment at some predetermined time after boot, say 15 minutes, but only if there is an internet connection? Essentially, I don't want time checking at boot, only want it later.

Thanks,
Randall.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=120708\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Short of removing it from your startup scripts and running it manually?

Why not forget about ntpd and just run ntpdate in a cron script every 15 minutes, e.g.:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
if [ -n "$(ifconfig wlan0 | grep UP)" ]; then
   ntpdate
fi
You could also run it before or after suspend etc...