Booting abnormal Exit

[glnman]

Everytime I boot up I get to "starting udevd and then a list of maybe 75 updating, "abnormal exit" messages. when I get into the gui and look all these files are empty thus not updateable. I never had this before until the last time I reinstalled SUSE 10.3 (new Install) whats up with that? Can I stop this unecessary updating and can I delete these files It's wanting to update? What to do? I'm fairly new to Linux but determined to get the Linux+ certification as I am A+ Certified now so if someone can explain the way out of my problem so I can understand it I would be in your debt!

Thanks,

the gregman

[gogalthorp]

When you reinstalled did you reformat the root (mounted as /) partition. It should do this by default but if you go to the manual partitioning it may be set to not reformat. If so there may be files left from the previous install. It is OK to not reformat the home (mounted as /home) partition which saves you user data and settings.

[glnman]

I reformatted the Linux drive with a Root and Swap partition using Partition Magic 8. Then I installed Linux 10.3 disallowing the recommended setup but going to the manual partitioning. Partition Magic should have cleared the drive. I believe I formatted both partitions as Ext3 and told Linux to do the same. Everything seemed to go well and Linux works OK after boot but it now shows a "Solaris" swap file and tells me there is an error in the kernel. At this point I'm not knowledgeable enough to investigate that. The files that are empty and causing the "abnormal exit" are /user/sbin and lots of them but I read that these are necessary files so I let them alone. Can I delete them as they all show 0 content? Still the operating system allows me to do everything I need to do except I have a world of trouble installing tarball files! I'm baffled beyond belief since I often get errors using the install sh after I untar and unzip then I'm stuck!

Thanks

[gogalthorp]

You should just let the installer do the partitioning. Just give Suse some free space.

That said Solaris is normal for a swap file. Swap files are not Ext3.

What is your error message? It may have to do with how you formated the swap.

Suse normally makes 3 partitions Swap,Root(/) and home (/home) It is really a good idea to have your home partition separate from your root. It allows you to upgrade/change distros without loosing your personal data and settings.

[glnman]

The reason I only created 2 partitions is that I read an article that said I only need a root and swap partition. So I went with that because when I let SUSE create its own boot partition one time it made a 78mb partition which filled up
real soon and would not allow me to add another new kernel boot option. Now with the two partions using the whole drive I have plenty of space to add what ever I want.

So, are you saying that when I install the soon to be released version 11 I will lose my setup? I always log in as root and everything should be there right?

As for the error message I get on boot it goes like this : starting udevd then
It scrolls down countless messages saying updating /user/sbin error abnormal exit. All these files listed have -0- content so there is nothing to update. May I delete these files and eliminate all these error messages or are they necessary for Linux to work right even though they are empty?

One problem I have found while trying to get good answers to my Linux problems is there are a lot of folk out there with bad advice. You seem to be the first person who seems to know your stuff and I appreciate your help! I want so much to get completely away from Windows that I will endure just about anything to get Linux running the way it should.

Thanks,

the gregman

[gogalthorp]

Most likely you will lose home. 11 is going to be a big jump and update may not work well. When you install you are presented with a partition scheme. You can manually modify the scheme, resetting the size, position, number of partitions, their mount points, type of file system etc. With install normally all partitions are created or formated. You can tell the installer not to foramt the partition that has home on it and mount it as /home This preserves personal settings and data since these things normally reside in /home. If home is on the root then it is going to get foramtted with the rest of root.

I have 4 partitions swap, root (/), home (/home), and vm (/vm) . vm is where i keep the data for my Virtual machines. This allows me to preserve the VM's and home if I reinstall or change distro's

The reason that the root was small when you allowed the installer to choose is that the install by default will only use unformatted space on the drive. You must tell it what you want to do. It is best to simply free up partition space on the drive and let the installer use it on a first time install. After the first install you want to manage the actions.


BTW you should not always log on as root. This is bad practice. You only need to be root if you are installing stuff or making system level changes. Also root is special in that the root user's home directory is not in the home directory. It is on the root of the file system (/). any settings will be lost. See /root

The error shows that you have a bad install!!! /usr/sbin contains programs that are user-system files. Any normal user will have problems. ie you do not have a complete system installed!!!!

[glnman]

Thanks for your help. I think I will let well enough alone for now because most of the system works OK. But when 11 come out I will back up needed files etc and do a clean install with /home, /root, and /swap.

It did take 4 tries for me to even get 10.3 installed period even though I built this machine specifically for SUSE 10. Always some problem caused me to stop and start over so I'm sure you are correct about the bad install. The surprising thing to me is how most everything still works anyway!

One final thing, If I have trouble later that I can't figure out may I contact you for help? I'll wait until 11 comes out though. By then I should be more knowledgeable about what I'm doing.

Thanks again,

the gregman