[Techtalk] Linux Booting Problems

[Anthony Gorecki]

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Hello,

I currently have a small network of servers running on a custom distribution 
which focuses on being a minimalistic, secure base platform for servers and 
workstations. The distribution has been extensively tested on Pentium 2, 3 
and 4 systems, but for some reason failed to boot when I deployed it on a 
Pentium 133 which was intended to be used as a NAT router. With an identical 
hardware configuration, the same system will boot using RedHat 9 and will 
boot into rescue mode from the RedHat 9 CD without problems.

Instead of using a traditional SysV init system, the distribution uses a 
modified RunIt init system to decrease boot times. The kernel will boot 
without problems and successfully starts RunIt, though the program will 
instantly cycle through all the run levels and halt the system. Each RunIt 
runlevel uses a Bash shellscript file to determine the appropriate action to 
take, therefore the only way the init system could cycle through all 
runlevels without performing any actions is if /bin/sh was crashing upon 
execution, either via segmentation fault or a library error.

As part of the troubleshooting process, I mounted the boot partition using the 
RedHat 9 rescue system and was able to execute Bash, the RunIt programs and 
all other programs without problems, which leads me to believe it is not a 
segmentation fault error. The base kernel is set to use i386 CPU settings and 
is confirmed to work properly, therefore the only possible cause I can find 
is that a library or dependency error is being generated as a result of using 
the older hardware. Without having another working motherboard of the same 
type, I can't test for the same problems using another 133MHz system.

All libraries and programs were installed and compiled using generic settings 
and should work on virtually all x86 architectures, but it's possible that 
one or more of them may have automatically compiled to run on i686 systems 
instead of i386 systems. I'm at a loss for which libraries could be causing 
this problem. I have checked glibc and several other generic libraries and 
can find no problems with any of them. Any suggestions which would help track 
down this problem would be greatly appreciated.

For reference, here is the hardware configuration which fails to load:
	Pentium-S 133MHz CPU
	48MB EDO RAM
	6.4GB 7,200RPM HD (boot)
	500MB 5,400RPM HD (swap)
	DLink 10/100MB/s Fast Ethernet Adapter (VIA Rhine chipset)
	3Com 10MB/s EtherLink II Adapter (3Com 3c503 chipset)
	Generic CDROM drive, BIOS and graphics card

Thanks.


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Best Regards,
Anthony Gorecki
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