Topic: All services Disabled on e-smith startup

[Mike Drummond]

Good Morning

SME 5.1 on a IBM ALT-SERVER (dual P133 processors) 20GB IDE HDD, 64MB Ram, DDS 2 tape, SCSI CROM.  (The home server.)

Following a system crash the server is booting to the e-smith console OK but all services are showing as disabled in the boot process.   You can ping the box ok and access the root prompt from the console. But you can not access the web configuration screens from the console or a work station. Also you can not access the box using Putty.  

Attempting to use the console menu to configure the server (I am assuming the configuration file(s) are damaged) allows you to access the first screen to input your domain name then choosing brings you back to the main console again.  This same behaviour applies to the console menu item 6 'Access the server manager' .

I could backup all the ibays and home directories to tape but this is a very long process on this old server as it requires mutiple tapes  . and I do it manually using Taper.

I have had to reinstall in the past but found restoring the users home directories as far as mail wa concerned caused problems with Outlook complaining about duplicate message nos.  The only solution I could find was to delete the old mail files.  I want to avoid this if I can.

I should know better but I only have a older data backup (ibays) not a full system back up.

Any ideas from here on how to reconfigure the server or do a non-destrictive reinstall that will  put back the server configuration files or at least allow me to reconfigure the server.

I do have a spare HDD so I could replace the current server drive and do a fresh SME install to get the necessary files on to tape.  For this to be sucessfull I would need to know the correct directories/files to backup.  This would usefull information to have as then I could do a 'system' backup to avoid this problem in the future.

Any ideas from here on how to reconfigure the server or do a non-destrictive reinstall that will  put back the server configuration files or at least allow me to reconfigure the server.

Many thanks
Mike Drummond

[Dan Brown]

Just for kicks, try logging in as root and do

/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event post-upgrade
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event reboot

This should rebuild all the config files based on the information in the config database (assuming that isn't hosed).

[Mike Drummond]

Thanks Dan
Unfortunately the problem remains.  You indicated that this probably means the config database is hosed.   Could you tell me where this database is and what the files are called.   I could then do a fresh install (on an old Pc) to get the necessary files to restore the server.    

Thanks
Mike

[Dan Brown]

The two main configuration databases are /home/e-smith/configuration and /home/e-smith/accounts.  They're both just flat text files, so you might want to take a look to see whether they're obviously scrambled first.

[Mike Drummond]

Well the files looked ok to me but no success on rebuild.

In the end I did a backup of the Ibays(just in case).  Then did a fresh install on a borrowed HDD.  Working through the configuration to match the old settings. I then downloaded the necessary blades to ensure I had an up to date clean install.  Finally a backup to tape of the newly installed server.  A restore of this tape on to the old HDD resolved the problem.

At least now I have a system backup seperate from the Ibays.


Thanks for your assistance

Cheers
Mike Drummond