hi there

I had hoped to get a bit further in to my voyage of HP-UX discovery
before making an ass of myself, but apparently its not to be.
I have recently aquired a Visualise C3600 workstation, which may have a
defective install of 11i. When powered up, the CDE starts, then I get a
"Action Required " window, telling me that the desktop messaging system
could not be started and that I need to login with a Failsafe session,
check that the hostname is correct and that the network is properly
configured - but where do I start. I can telnet in to it, and it will
ping a public host by name.

I have a screenshot of this if anyone is interested, but I have a
feeling that one of you may have seen this before ....

Regards


Frederick

In article <442d847d$1_3@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com>, Frederick Smith wrote:
> hi there
>
> I had hoped to get a bit further in to my voyage of HP-UX discovery
> before making an ass of myself, but apparently its not to be.
> I have recently aquired a Visualise C3600 workstation, which may have a
> defective install of 11i. When powered up, the CDE starts, then I get a
> "Action Required " window, telling me that the desktop messaging system
> could not be started and that I need to login with a Failsafe session,
> check that the hostname is correct and that the network is properly
> configured - but where do I start. I can telnet in to it, and it will
> ping a public host by name.
>
> I have a screenshot of this if anyone is interested, but I have a
> feeling that one of you may have seen this before ....
>
> Regards
>
>
> Frederick

Frederick,

you may want to try running: /usr/contrib/bin/X11/dr_dt. This script is
designed to diagnose issues with the CDE configuration and system configuration
which may cause problems for CDE.

CDE is very network sensitive - make sure your hostname and IP resolve forward
and reverse. What does your /etc/nsswitch.conf look like? What are you using
for hosts resolution (files, dns, nis, etc)?

Try this:

# nslookup your_host_name
# nslookup your_ip_address

Do both return information and does the information match? It should...

Kevin

--
Unix Guy Consulting, LLC
Unix and Linux Automation, Shell, Perl and CGI scripting
http://www.unix-guy.com

Frederick Smith <batman@microsoft.com> writes:

> I have recently aquired a Visualise C3600 workstation, which may have
> a defective install of 11i. When powered up, the CDE starts, then I
> get a "Action Required " window, telling me that the desktop messaging
> system could not be started and that I need to login with a Failsafe
> session, check that the hostname is correct and that the network is
> properly configured - but where do I start. I can telnet in to it, and
> it will ping a public host by name.

Four files to check:

- /etc/rc.config.d/netconf - hostname, IP address(es) and gateway(s)
are defined there. If the workstation is set up to use DHCP, that is
done here, too.

- /etc/resolv.conf - this defines the domain and the DNS nameservers
the workstation will use. If DHCP is in use and working properly,
this file should get updated automatically.

- /etc/hosts - there MUST be an entry for the workstation itself,
containing the workstation's IP address and hostname. This entry
must agree with the information in the two files mentioned above.

There MUST also be an entry for "localhost" with IP address 127.0.0.1.

- /etc/nsswitch.conf - if this file does not exist, the workstation
will use default values that are usually sensible. If it exists,
check the line that begins with "hosts:". It should mention both
"files" and "dns". There should be several example nsswitch.conf
files in the /etc directory, named like /etc/nsswitch.*.


You can change all these things using SAM, but for information
gathering it is usually faster to check these files directly.

--
Matti.Kurkela@welho.com

Matti Juhani Kurkela wrote:
> Frederick Smith <batman@microsoft.com> writes:
>
>
>>I have recently aquired a Visualise C3600 workstation, which may have
>>a defective install of 11i. When powered up, the CDE starts, then I
>>get a "Action Required " window, telling me that the desktop messaging
>>system could not be started and that I need to login with a Failsafe
>>session, check that the hostname is correct and that the network is
>>properly configured - but where do I start. I can telnet in to it, and
>>it will ping a public host by name.
>
>
> Four files to check:
>
> - /etc/rc.config.d/netconf - hostname, IP address(es) and gateway(s)
> are defined there. If the workstation is set up to use DHCP, that is
> done here, too.
>
> - /etc/resolv.conf - this defines the domain and the DNS nameservers
> the workstation will use. If DHCP is in use and working properly,
> this file should get updated automatically.
>
> - /etc/hosts - there MUST be an entry for the workstation itself,
> containing the workstation's IP address and hostname. This entry
> must agree with the information in the two files mentioned above.
>
> There MUST also be an entry for "localhost" with IP address 127.0.0.1.
>
> - /etc/nsswitch.conf - if this file does not exist, the workstation
> will use default values that are usually sensible. If it exists,
> check the line that begins with "hosts:". It should mention both
> "files" and "dns". There should be several example nsswitch.conf
> files in the /etc directory, named like /etc/nsswitch.*.
>
>
> You can change all these things using SAM, but for information
> gathering it is usually faster to check these files directly.
>


Thanks for that Matti - there was a skeleton nsswitch.conf file in
there, with no mention of dns. I edited it manually and the system is
now working.
My Solaris system has a template file called nsswitch.dns which I used
to get it started - something like that might have been useful on HP-UX ...

On 2006-04-08, Frederick Smith <batman@microsoft.com> wrote:
> Matti Juhani Kurkela wrote:
>> Frederick Smith <batman@microsoft.com> writes:

>>>I have recently aquired a Visualise C3600 workstation, which may have
>>>a defective install of 11i. When powered up, the CDE starts, then I
>>>get a "Action Required " window, telling me that the desktop messaging
>>>system could not be started and that I need to login with a Failsafe
>>>session, check that the hostname is correct and that the network is
>>>properly configured - but where do I start. I can telnet in to it, and
>>>it will ping a public host by name.
>>
>> - /etc/nsswitch.conf - if this file does not exist, the workstation
>> will use default values that are usually sensible. If it exists,
>> check the line that begins with "hosts:". It should mention both
>> "files" and "dns". There should be several example nsswitch.conf
>> files in the /etc directory, named like /etc/nsswitch.*.

> Thanks for that Matti - there was a skeleton nsswitch.conf file in
> there, with no mention of dns. I edited it manually and the system is
> now working.
> My Solaris system has a template file called nsswitch.dns which I used
> to get it started - something like that might have been useful on HP-UX ...

There usually is. Something like, at least.

-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 547 Nov 14 2000 /etc/nsswitch.compat
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 372 Nov 14 2000 /etc/nsswitch.files
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 574 Nov 14 2000 /etc/nsswitch.hp_defaults
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 532 Nov 14 2000 /etc/nsswitch.nis
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 585 Nov 14 2000 /etc/nsswitch.nisplus
-r--r--r-- 1 root sys 590 May 16 2003 /etc/nsswitch.conf

Although there have been times when the nsswitch.hp_defaults wasn't the
same as the hardcoded default, but anyway...


--
Mikko Nahkola <mnahkola@trein.ntc.nokia.com>
#include <disclaimer.h>
#Not speaking for my employer. No warranty. YMMV.