John O'Hagan wrote:
Hi,
When shutting down my etch laptop of late, it stops just short of power-off
with a message along the lines of "No more processes in this runlevel". I
then have to power-off manually.
I looked in /etc/init.d and noticed that the "halt" script was no longer a
script, but a text file containing configuration for asterisk. Also, the
mountvirtfs script had been replaced by a gif image! This explained some
other boot error messages I had been getting e.g., about /proc and /sys.
I'm guessing this was caused by some random filesystem corruption I've been
getting lately as a result of a faulty power-supply in the laptop, requiring
manually running fsck.(It's an ext3 filesystem.) Even after this I
occasionally notice random file substitutions like the above.
But my question is, how to fix it?
From what you write it appears that either
- some files of your system have been more or less randomly manipulated
- you have been hacked.
In either case I would do a clean reinstall, because you will never
know, what'll break next.
1. Back up your data
2. Back up your /etc
3. save your package installation information
$ dpkg --get-selections "*" >myselections # or use \*
save 'myselections'
4. you could also save your configuration options by
$ debconf-get-selections > file
(I have never done this myself, in my case it doesn't save enough time
to bother)
5. Reinstall only base-system
6.
# dpkg --set-selections < myselections
restores package selections
7. install your packages with aptitude
compare backup of /etc with new /etc and copy 'your' modified
configuration files.
I keep regular backups of /etc, 'myselections' and my data plus some
personal configuration scripts and can reinstall from bare metal within
about an hour. Most of that time the machine is busy by itself and
requires little attention.
For a scenario like the one you describe this would be certainly less
hassle and time than to try to track down all problems and find solutions.
HTH, YMMV, etc.
Johannes
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