Recovery from an LED 553 in AIX V4

Contents

About This Document

About LED 553

Recovery Procedure

1. Turn the key to the Service position.

2. With bootable media of the same version and level as the system, boot the system. The bootable media can be ANY ONE of the following:
   • Bootable CD-ROM
   • mksysb
   • Bootable Install Tape

   Follow the prompts to the Welcome to Base OS menu.

3. Choose Start Maintenance Mode for System Recovery (Option 3). The next screen contains prompts for the Maintenance menu.
   1. Choose Access a Root Volume Group (Option 1). At this stage the console displays information about rootvg and a menu with two options.
   2. Choose Access this volume group and start a shell (Option 1).

   If you get errors from the preceding option, do not continue with the rest of this procedure. Correct the problem causing the error. If you need assistance correcting the problem causing the error, contact one of the following:

   • local branch office
   • your point of sale
   • your AIX support center

4. Use the df command to check for free space in /dev/hd3 and /dev/hd4.

      df  /dev/hd3 
      df  /dev/hd4 
   

5. If df shows that either file system is out of space, erase some files from that file system. Three files you may want to erase are /smit.log, /smit.script, and /.sh_history.

6. Next, check the /etc/inittab file for corruption. It may be empty or missing, or it may have an incorrect entry. For comparison, see the section Sample /etc/inittab File at the end of this document.

7. If the inittab file is corrupt, set your terminal type in preparation for editing the file. (xxx stands for a terminal type, such as lft, ibm3151, or vt100.)

      TERM=xxx 
      export TERM 
   

   Now use an editor to create the /etc/inittab file. For an example, see the section Sample /etc/inittab File at the end of this document. If your /etc/inittab file was corrupt and you recreated it, you may not need to perform any of the following steps.

8. Use the following command to check for any modifications or problems with permission.

      ls -al /.profile /etc/environment /etc/profile 
   

   Example output:

   -rw-r--r--  1 root  system  158 Dec 14 1993  /.profile 
   -rw-rw-r--  1 root  system 1389 Oct 26 1993  /etc/environment 
   -rw-r--r--  1 root  system 1214 Jan 22 1993  /etc/profile 
   

   etc/profile or .profile may contain a command that is valid only in the Korn shell. Change the command to something that is also valid in the Bourne shell. For example, change the following:

      export PATH=/bin:/usr/bin/:/etc:/usr/ucb:. 
   

   to the following:

      PATH=/bin:/usr/bin/:/etc:/usr/ucb:. 
      export PATH 
   

   /etc/environment is a special case. The only commands it may contain are simple variable assignments, such as statements of the form <varname>=<value>. Check this file with an editor to verify the format.

9. Check for missing or moved files with the following command:

      ls -al /bin /bin/bsh /bin/sh /lib /u /unix 
   

   Example output:

   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys      8 Aug 5 1994 /bin -> /usr/bin 
   -r-xr-xr-x 3 bin  bin 256224 Jun 4 1993 /bin/bsh 
   -r-xr-xr-x 3 bin  bin 256224 Jun 4 1993 /bin/sh 
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys      8 Aug 5 1994 /lib -> /usr/lib 
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys      5 Aug 5 1994 /u -> /home 
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys     18 Aug 5 1994 /unix -> /usr/lib/boot/unix 
   

   If any of these files are missing, the problem may be a missing symbolic link. Use the commands from the following list that correspond to the missing links.

      ln -s /usr/bin /bin 
      ln -s /usr/lib/boot/unix /unix 
      ln -s /usr/lib /lib 
      ln -s /home /u 
   

10. Use the following command to make sure that fsck and rc.boot are not missing or corrupt.

       ls -l /etc/fsck /sbin/rc.boot 
    

    Example output:

    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root system    14 Aug  5 1994 /etc/fsck -> /usr/sbin/fsck 
    -rwxrwxr-- 1 root system 33760 Aug 30 1993 /sbin/rc.boot 
    

11. Make sure the /etc/inittab file is the AIX V4. For that version, the line that begins with brc is

       brc::sysinit:/sbin/rc.boot 3 >/dev/console 2>&1 
    

    See the section Sample /etc/inittab File at the end of this document for an example.

12. If you have not found any obvious problems, try substituting ksh for bsh with the following commands. (The first command saves your bsh before you copy over it.)

       cp /bin/bsh /bin/bsh.orig 
       cp /bin/ksh /bin/bsh 
    

    If you can then reboot successfully, you know that one of the profiles was causing problems for bsh. Check the profiles again by running the following:

       /bin/bsh.orig /.profile 
       /bin/bsh.orig /etc/profile 
       /bin/bsh.orig /etc/environment 
    

If you receive errors with any of these commands, you know there is a command in that profile that bsh cannot handle.

If you followed all of the preceding steps and the system still stops at an LED 553 during a reboot in Normal mode, you may want to pursue further system recovery assistance from one of the following:

• local branch office
• your point of sale
• your AIX support center

For reasons of time and the integrity of your AIX operating system, the best alternative at this point may be to reinstall AIX.

Sample /etc/inittab File for AIX V4

:@(#)49 1.28.2.7 src/bos/etc/inittab,cmdoper,bos411, 
: 9430C411a 7/26/94 16.27.45 
init:2:initdefault: 
brc::sysinit:/sbin/rc.boot 3 >/dev/console 2>&1 # Phase 3 of 
   system boot 
powerfail::powerfail:/etc/rc.powerfail 2>&1 | alog -tboot > 
   /dev/console 
rc:2:wait:/etc/rc > alog -tboot > /dev/console 2>&1 
   # Multi-User checks 
fbcheck:2:wait:/usr/lib/dwm/fbcheck > alog -tboot >/dev/console 
   2>&1 
srcmstr:2:respawn:/etc/srcmstr 
   # System Resource Controller 
rctcpip:2:wait:/etc/rc.tcpip > /dev/console 2> 
   &1 # Start TCP/IP daemons 
rcnfs:2:wait:/etc/rc.nfs > /dev/console 2>&1 # Start NFS Daemons 
cron:2:respawn:/etc/cron 
cons:0123456789:respawn:/etc/getty /dev/console 
piobe:2:wait:/usr/lib/lpd/pio/etc/pioinit > 
   /dev/null 2>&1  # pb cleanup 
qdaemon:2:wait:/bin/startsrc -sqdaemon 
writesrv:2:wait:/bin/startsrc -swritesrv 
uprintfd:2:respawn:/usr/sbin/uprintfd 
dt:2:wait:/etc/rc.dt