startup initialization problems

[Mark Stewart]

i have a workstation that tends to freeze up from time to time and I've been trying to figure out anything that might be wrong with it. at startup, while starting all the daemons, etc. I get two problems that seem like good candidates of the source of the freezing. Here is the information from the rc.log file for these two errors:

==========================
Starting HP Distributed Print Service
Output from "/sbin/rc2.d/S722pd start":
----------------------------
/sbin/rc2.d/S722pd[136]: /var/opt/pd/pdclientd/startup.log: Cannot create the specified file
pdclientd returned exit code: 1.
Could not start pdclientd.
See files /var/opt/pd/pdclientd/*.log for more information.
"/sbin/rc2.d/S722pd start" FAILED

Start clock daemon
Output from "sbin/rc2.d/S730cron start":
---------------------------
cron started
! can't change directory to the crontab directory. ((Date/Time listed here))
! **** Cron ABORTED *******
((Date/Time listed here))

============================

the hp distributed print service thing is weird because that was never installed. and all of my printers still work regardless of this, so basically I think it could be removed altogether, but I'm not sure how.. any ideas? also, the logs it references do not exist on the machine, so I suspect it's trying to start a daemon that isn't there.

the cron stuff is more likely to be what's freezing the system, it seems to me.. when that error occurs, the screen shows "can't change to crontab directory" "cron aborted".. when I went looking for it, the crontab directory it is trying to access isn't there. I don't have any scheduled tasks to run on this machine either, so could it just be turned off? let me know if more information is needed. thanks!

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

To turn cron off:

edit /etc/rc.config.d/cron

and make the line that says

CRON=1

say

CRON=0

To turn HP DSP off:

edit /etc/rc.config.d/pd

and make the line that says

PD_CLIENT=1

say

PD_CLIENT=0

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Mark:

The startup/shutdown scripts that reside in '/sbin/init.d/' (with the run-level ('rc' links in '/sbin/rc?.d/') are controlled by configuration files in '/etc/rc.config.d'. For example, if you didn't want to start the cron daemon, you would change the file '/etc/rc.config.d/cron' to specify the environmental variable 'CRON=0'.

Take a look on your system for a configuration file in '/etc/rc.config.d/pd' [if things follow convention] and turn off the startup of the print service there. Otherwise, simply remove the link from the '/sbin/rc?.d/' directory to eliminate starting what you don't want.

As for the 'cron' daemon, you should have a directory '/var/adm/cron/' structure that looks like:

-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 59 Jun 10 1996 .proto
prw------- 1 root root 0 Feb 6 13:37 FIFO
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 65 Jan 11 18:13 OLDlog
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 39 Jan 6 2000 at.allow
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 29 Jan 6 2000 cron.allow
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29590 Feb 14 05:02 log
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 17 Jun 10 1996 queuedefs

...the '/var/adm/cron' directory should be readable and executable for everyone (rx-rx-rx) and owned as 'bin:bin'.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Mark Stewart]

I removed both from startup. Hopefully that will eliminate the freezing of the workstation. Thanks for the help!