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Date:      Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:24:16 +0000
From:      Dieter <freebsd@sopwith.solgatos.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: How to interrupt hung boot process? 
Message-ID:  <200902210824.IAA07970@sopwith.solgatos.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:58:56 CST." <20090214005444.0963.5922242B@shaunc.com> 

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Shaun writes:

> Have you tried ^X or ^Z? Often when my cable modem has lost its link and
> I reboot, FreeBSD will hang waiting to start sendmail because it can't
> determine the local IP. Sometimes it will hang while processing my ipfw
> scripts due to DNS failures.
> 
> I usually try ^C, ^X, and ^Z in that order and in my experience one of
> them will abort the hung process.

I tried every letter on the keyboard, ^\, a few other keys, and break
(RS-232 console).  Seems like ^\ used to be a sure kill (SIGKILL maybe?).

Tim writes:

> If a shell script traps the signals, there is nothing you can do except
> by calling a SIGKILL to the PID, which requires the system to be in
> Multi-User Mode.

The shell script doesn't, but a binary program it calls might.
I'll have to look into that.

michael writes:

> or, boot with rescue cd or anything that will write to the fs and 
> disable the script

I managed to get the boot loader to boot single user, then
moved the script to a different filename.  Added a symlink
from the script name to /bin/true, which turns out to not
exist.  Someone moved true to /usr/bin.  Fortunately the
script not existing didn't cause a problem.

Thanks, gang.  Any other ideas?

BTW, softdeps and background fsck are very much appreciated
when pressing the reset button!



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