unbootable 10.20 workstation

[John Bartin]

Upon rebooting a HP Visualize J-282 with hp-ux 10.20, I got the message "cannot find /stand/vmunix."

I printed out some other threads from this list to attempt to fix the problem ,but nothing has worked so far. There is no secondary boot device or backup kernal, and there is no Ignite bootable tape backup.

I tried booting from the support cdrom and reinstalling a generic kernal. At first attempt, it appeared reinstall the generic kernal, but upon reboot it again gave the "cannot find /stand/vmunix" error. I have tried to reinstall the kernal again, and at this point fsck cannot successfully run, and the kernal therfore cannot be replaced. (However, I can still boot to IPL.)

I am assuming that reinstalling and then restoring from backup is the only option left. Is this correct? Also, if I do have to reinstall, is it possible to reinstall the OS without wiping out the logical volume configuration?

Thanks ......

[Sanjay_6]

Hi John,

I saw the other post from you in the patch category and it was not a problem. You could have maintained that thread instead of posting another thread. Category is not so important. You may not get answers to a hpux question in win98 category, but anything under hpux related to hpux is not a problem. That is what i feel.

About your peoblem, have you tried using the /stand/vmunix.prev . this is the backup kernel and until deleted by someone, should exist on your system. go to the ipl prompt and trpe,

hpux (;0)/stand/vmunix

or try

hpux (;0)/stand/vmunix.prev

IF you cannot boot through any of these kernel, not you can recover using the recovery CD, you have no other choice, but to reinstall the OS.

Try this link on how to recover using the recovery CD,

http://us-support2.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=d158d8bd196baa12e2/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000047869320

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Sandip Ghosh]

If you re-install HP-UX your VG00 lvols will be wiped out. But you can restore the data from your other disk by doing vgimport, provided you have the disk/volume group information in details. If you know which disk was in which volumegroup you should be able to import the volumegroup .

Sandip

[Helen French]

Hi John,

Do you have a file called /stand/vmunix.prev ? This is the old kernel which system keeps in /stand. You can try booting from that:

ISL> hpux (;0)/stand/vmunix.prev

Also if you want a listing of files in /stand, then you can try this:

ISL> hpux ll /stand

This will list you the files in /stand from the ISL prompt, check this and make sure that nobody did a mv or cp the kernel files.

Booting from recovery CD is another option.

HTH,
Shiju

[Darrell Allen]

Hi John,

See what files you have in /stand:
10.20 and later:
ISL> hpux ll /
prior to 10.20:
ISL> hpux ll /stand

If you find a previous copy of the kernel try to boot from it.

I don't know if this would work (blue skying) but...

If you can tar a copy of you kernel onto a tape, you might boot off cd into a recovery shell and restore the kernel from that tape.

I've never tried that. I'm just trying to think of something to keep you from having to rebuild the box.

Good luck,
Darrell

[John Bolene]

Sounds to me like you have a hardware disk problem.

The disk you were booting from may have died.

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

I think it's either the LABEL file or BDRA which went corrupted.

Try getting to ISL. If:

hpux (;0)/stand/vmunix fails, try:

hpux ll (;0)/

If kernel cnanot be found, try:

hpux -lm

If this fails, rebuild the boot structures from recovery media, if it succeeds, then:

vgchange -a y vg00
and restore LABEL file.

If hpux ll suceeds, (kernel found), then:

hpux -is

If this fails, recover boot disk structures from recovery media. If it succeeds, problem is probably related to additional services, like networking and other daemons. Check boot and system logs (/etc/rc.log, /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log).

If after all this, the recovery media still does not hold the kernel, then, as John Bolene suggested, it could be a hardware problem.

HTH,
Vince