Grub problem

[Tod]

Frank Tanner III wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 16:49 -0400, Tod wrote:
>> Rick Stevens wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 21:08 -0400, Tod wrote:
>>>> Tod Merley wrote:
>>>>> On 5/3/07, Tod <tod at stthomasepc.org> wrote:
>>>>>> I'm trying to stabilize a RH9 machine so I can upgrade to FC6.  For some
>>>>>> reason GRUB is ignoring the timeout and upon reboot leaves the boot
>>>>>> screen up without ever booting the default image.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Has anyone ever heard of this.  Anything I can check?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks - Tod
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -- 
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>>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Tod!
>>>>>
>>>>> I am not sure exactly what you are saying.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can you hit a key (in particular escape) when the boot screen
>>>>> (splash?) first comes up and see the boot menu?
>>>> I'm actually assisting a remote user.  The problem is that if the 
>>>> machine reboots, which it magically seems to be doing every Saturday,
>>>> and there is no one around, it sits at the Grub splash screen until 
>>>> someone shows up on Monday and selects a kernel to boot to.  After that 
>>>> everything is fine.
>>> I'd be checking every crontab I can find for the reboot issue.  I'd also
>>> be checking the machine for rootkits and other malware.  This sounds
>>> like the machine's "owned" by a hacker.
>>>
>> I did and found nothing, very frustrating.  Any ideas on what to look 
>> for that I may have missed?
>>
>> I'm going to do a clamscan tonight to see if that turns up anything.
>>
>>
> 
> How is the power in the room where the machine is located?  Is it
> possible that there is a brown-out condition causing it?  How about the
> possibility that someone is un-plugging the machine temporarily?


It is supposed to be fine, we discussed that possibility too.  I also 
suggested the possibility that someone might be playing with him as a joke.

I also thought that maybe the power supply was bad or we had a bad 
memory stick but the consistency of the reboot kind of ruled that out.


> As funny as this sounds, we had a cleaning person that was unplugging a
> server from a PDU to plug in his fricken buffer when he came through to
> buff the hall-way outside of the server room.  We chased our tails for
> MONTHS trying to figure out the cause, until one of our junior
> sys-admins had to stay late one night to work on an unrelated issue.
> Needless to say we had a few harsh words for the manager of the cleaning
> crew.


What a pain.  Luckily this isn't a high availability production box or 
I'd really be pulling my hair out.

I just spoke to my contact and the keyboardless operation was the cause 
of the grub hanging problem.  He plugged in the keyboard, init 6, and 
everything came up fine.  I was sure if that was the issue the BIOS 
would have complained but I've been wrong before.


Thanks - Tod