Hard drive full?

[Internexus]

I have a Unix machine at one of the remote sites that I understand was for our Engineer's as a file server. From what I have been told was the hard drive is full and it can no longer boot even?! I know nothing of Unix myself and have had some personal time only in Linux. Can someone give me some ideas/directions to start in for getting this machine functioning again? This is utilizing the SCO 5 distro of Unix to my understanding.

Upon the time that I get the machine going does Unix utilize the same "rm" command for removing files like linux? Thanks a lot guys.
-sean

 

[PHV]

SCO OSR 5.0.X has many posix compliant commands.

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[motoslide]

You should be able to get to singleuser (maintenance) mode by interrupting the normal boot. During the boot process, after all the hardware is displayed, you'll get to a prompt which states (something like this):

Enter the root password to enter system maintenance mode or press CNTL-D for normal startup.

If you do nothing, it will continue to boot into multiuser mode after a pre-defined timout (default 60 seconds).

I don't see why a full 3rd disk would prevent the system from booting, though. You may have other issues.
If you CAN get to singleuser mode, post the contents of this file:

/etc/default/filesys

 

[Internexus]

Thank's a lot guys, I will find out if it is getting that far and if not what error it is throwing, or if he is able to get into the single user mode area. If he can't I will be sure to try it when it comes to my place of work wednesday. I did some general reading and was pleased to see it is a near duplicate of linux so I should have no problem cruising around in the file structure etc. Thanks a lot guys!

 

[KenCunningham]

pleased to see it is a near duplicate of linux[/quote Internexus]

Shhhhhhh. Don't tell SCO!! ;-) Good luck.

 

[edfair]

Too late. You're now at risk of being called as an expert witness.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Internexus]

Hey guys, the Unix box is on it's way today. I spoke with the net admin at the place and he said that he actually has tried going into single mode and has had no luck. I guess after you punch that in and prior to complete bootup it just scrolls "no space on dev hd" and won't stop scrolling that at all. Does this help you guys out?

 

[motoslide]

There's a good possibility that the system actually reaches singleuser mode, but the scrolling messages make it hard to see the command prompt. If that's the case, you can usually get enough space to quiet the messages by clearing some log files. My favorite to clear first is the spooler log.

# cd /usr/spool/lp/logs
# >requests

I realize you may not be able to see these commands as you type them, so be careful with your keystrokes.

If the system truly won't go into singleuser mode, then you may have to boot on floppy, mount the root filesystem, and look around from there. You can find details on this elsewhere in this forum (see FAQ58-1366 for similar tasks).

 

[Internexus]

With your string of commands you game me do I need the ">" prior to the requests? I imagine so? Once I see logs in there can I just use the "rm" command to start clearing them out?

 

[motoslide]

That directory should only contain 2 files, and I WOULD NOT remove them. Using ">" simply clears the file without deletion.
If you are able to clear that file, you will probably just gain a couple of megabytes (maybe more, maybe much less). So, this isn't a cure, but hopefully it would be enough to stop the scrolling messages and allow you to troubleshoot further.

 

[edfair]

Any possibility of a root&boot set of floppies?

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Internexus]

So far no luck. Once it starts scrolling the error the keyboard seems to be pretty much locked out.

The only boot disks he has are the ones that came with the machine so it has the original file structure/commands and nothing more, so it leaves us limited.

Any other ideas guys?

 

[motoslide]

If you know which version of SCO OpenServer is loaded on the system, we can probably create a set of boot/root images. The biggest problem would be transferring that image onto a floppy without access to a running UNIX system. I know there are some "rawrite" utilities out there that you can run in a WIN/DOS box, but I don't think I have one laying around right now.

 

[edfair]

Suspect that you could temporarily replace the boot hard drive, create a system on the replacement, get the second drive attached, create a root and boot generic set, then use it to clean the original boot drive. Haven't done it, so I may be out of line.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Internexus]

Actually Ed that is currently the game plan. However we don't have the installation cd's here so that will happen next week I think. Motoslide, if we have no luck with this or any other options that may come up I may just have to go this route you know?

 

[motoslide]

If you can get "rawrite" (try here:

http://www.fdos.org/ripcord/rawrite/),

I can probably get you the root/boot set. Do you know which version of OpenServer is installed on that system?