I'm trying to transfer my working NEXTSTEP 3.3 system to a new EIDE disk and a new machine. I've done this many times before, but this time, since I'm going from a 440BX chipset system to a VIA chipset system, I want to boot with config=Default and reconfigure since the VIA machine doesn't have the PIIX hardware.
My problem is that when I boot with config=Default--even on my original 440BX machine--the boot process starts to get stuck after checking netinfo database local.nidb, which takes a long time to complete. It then seems to hang at starting lookupd. I've tried booting in single user mode and copying the EIDE.config/Default.config to EIDE.config/Instance0.config (after backing up the original Instance0.config, of course) and then booting normally, but this produces the same result, at least on the VIA chipset machine.
Does anyone have any insight on what the problem might be? I'm rusty on a lot of my NEXTSTEP sysadmin skills since I don't have to mess with my always-on office NEXTSTEP machine--which has been running for about 27 years with occasionally upgraded hardware--much at all these days. My gut feeling is that it probably has something to do with the EIDE system, but I'm not sure.
I rebooted normally again with EIDE.config/Default.table as EIDE.config/Instance0.table but this time hit ctrl-c at point where lookupd gets stuck and the rest of the book completed normally. Odd. I still don't know why that doesn't work when config=Default is used.
Well it seems to get past the boot drivers (EIDE.config) if it's hanging at the networking.
The slow speeds could be caused by the slow backwards IDE compatibility speeds.
What is you NetworkDeviceDriver.config/Default.table ? Where NetworkDeviceDriver is your actual driver
Thanks for the reply, pTeK.
I haven't modified the Default.table from my Intel82557NetworkDriver.config. On the other hand, there's no network driver specified in the System.config/Default.table, so when booting with config=Default I wouldn't expect that there's any network driver loaded.
I wonder why lookupd is being launched when the network isn't up.
Hello,
Do you have hostconfig setuped? Its because of that for sure. I allways keep a copy of the original hostconfig with the -AUTOMATIC- case i need not to get stuck when i need to change something.
Boot in single user, go to /etc, create a copy of your original hostconfig, to hostconfig.bak, edit the current hostconfig, change the lines which have changed to -AUTOMATIC-
Save hostconfig and exit single user should not load any network stuff
Good luck
Regards
Thanks, rjnf! I think you're right. I examined the working system and it had a hostconfig just as you mentioned. I'll keep a copy of both the original hostconfig and the one that boots in single-user mode. Renaming or copying files beats creating or editing the Instance0.table files of all the necessary drivers in the single-user console with nano or vi! (Which is what I did.)