Continuing tale of the Powerserver 320H - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

23 Nov 2001

On Nov 23, 14:44, Carlos Murillo wrote:

...
  #ls
 ls: not found
 #vi
 vi: not found 
I'm no AIX expert, and I've not used it in years.  I think 3.2 uses shared
libraries, and vi probably needs something in a library that's not mounted
(or not in the right place) when running the limited maintenance shell.
 I'm surprised ls doesn't work, though.  The shell should support ls, dd,
backup, restore, chown, mkfs, mknod, mount, and things like that.  And of
course, our editor of choice: ed.

...
  #cat /etc/mnttab 
Have a look in /etc/filesystems and see what it thinks it should mount for
"mount all".  I think AIX actually deletes /etc/mnttab as part of the
normal startup, and does a "touch /etc/mnttab" to leave an empty file.

...
  #getrootfs
 usage: /usr/sbin/getrootfs [-f] diskname
                   -f disregard status of hd5
 Available disks:           location:
          hdisk0            00-01-00-00

 #getrootfs -f hdisk0
 Importing Volume Group...
 rootvg
 /dev/rhd4 (/): ** Unmounted cleanly - Check supressed
 /dev/rhd2 (/usr): ** Unmounted cleanly - Check supressed
 /usr/sbin/getrootfs: mount: not found
 checking all mounts and the existance of df
 /usr/sbin/getrootfs: mount: not found
 /usr is not mounted

 #ls
 ls: not found
 #mount
 mount: not found
 #umount
 Usage: umount [-sf] {-a|-n Node|-t Type|all|allr|Device|File|directory|File
...
  System}
 #

 Further investigation revealed that if I "umount /usr", then there is
 some mount executable in the ram disk.  Ok, so  I make /usr1, copy all
 the stuff in the ramdisk /usr to /usr1 (also in ramdisk) and run
 getrootfs again.  Still no luck mounting /usr .  So, using the tools
 that I copied into /usr1 I mount /dev/hd4 in /mymnt/hd4 and /dev/hd2
 in /mymnt/hd2 ; further investigation reveals that there indeed exist
 directories /mymnt/hd2/bin, /mymnt/hd2/lib, /mymnt/hd4/etc and so
 on; I seem to have mounted / and /usr from the HD correctly.
 I still cannot use any executables in the HD, though:

 #/mymnt/hd2/bin/ls
 killed

 typing
 # cat /mymnt/hd4/etc/passwd

 reveals that AIX seems to have shadow passwords but I can't find any
 of the usual files (master* etc) . 
Possibly in /etc/security/passwd, /etc/security/group, and so on.  Don't
believe AIX is UNIX.  It's not.

...
  # passwd
 cannot execute 
Probably the executable isn't in your PATH.  If you have the filesystems
mounted (BTW, why "mymnt" not just "mnt"?  That's what mnt is for)
you can
add the relevant directories

PATH=/mymnt/hd2/bin:$PATH

but it might be better (if you just have two partitions on the hard drive)
to mount hd2 directly on /mnt, and then mount hd4 on /mnt/usr.  At least
then things will be in the correct places relative to each other.  There
isn't a directory called "/root", is there?

You could try the "users" command, though I expect it only works on a
normal system (ie not from the maintenacne shell, which is sort of a mini
system, like the miniroot or standalone shell in IRIX and Solaris).  If you
can edit /etc/passwd with ed, you can probably remove the password field
...
 from root's entry, leaving a null field (no
password). 
-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York