Server stays in runlevel 6 after reboot causing network service not to start

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I'm currently having an issue with RHEL 6.6 on HPE BL660 Gen8 server wherein after OS installation via kickstart, the server comes up successfully. But when I check the runlevel it reports as 'unknown'. After installing a couple of tools for monitoring, config management, and then I reboot it, the server comes up but stays in runlevel 6.

This means none of the network interfaces start. However, the OS disk is using FCoE to boot from SAN and it works without any issues.

What has been checked so far:
- default runlevel in inittab is set to 3
- network service is enabled and if the service is started manually, the interfaces get initialized
- All ethernet interfaces have ONBOOT parameter set to YES
- Added an entry into /etc/rc.local to execute 'service network start' but that doesn't help as well
- Manually execute init 3 on the command line - it still doesn't start the network services
- Reboot the server using init 6

The blade server is using QLOGIC FLB630 20G cards and I've tried updating its firmware as well.

None of the above has worked. Is there any way to diagnose what's causing this issue? appreciate your help

Responses

I'm currently having an issue with RHEL 6.6 on HPE BL660 Gen8 server wherein after OS installation via kickstart, the server comes up successfully. But when I check the runlevel it reports as 'unknown'. After installing a couple of tools for monitoring, config management, and then I reboot it, the server comes up but stays in runlevel 6.

Do you mean it stays up in runlevel 6 instead of taking reboot? I assume you wanted to say 'it stays up in runlevel 5'.

If I assume that you are referring to runlevel 5 in which network service is not up, then need to check a few things:

  • Check if 'Networking' is set to Yes in '/etc/sysconfig/network. I assume you might have already checked on this.
  • Check the start script file if available in /etc/rc.d/rc5.d, it should be 'S10network'
S10network -> ../init.d/network

If this file is not available there, then create it as root user as symbolic link to /etc/init.d/network script file.

it is currently in runlevel 6 and NOT 5... but surprisingly it isn't rebooting as it supposed to do in runlevel 6. So I guess, there's some service that is holding it in runlevel 6 - or the reboot isn't complete...may be ????

Networking is set to YES in /etc/sysconfig/network, and the S10network is linked to rc3.d and I'm not using runlevel 5 here.

It is certainly stuck while terminating some service which you could see there. Check on this and see also compare the Start and Kill sequence of this system with a good system so that if there is any discrepancy in the order then u could correct it.

I have fixed the issue - it was all because of someone who had added a workaround to mount all filesystems using a custom init script (/etc/init.d/mountall with a link to /etc/rc3.d/S09mountall... ie...to run before the network service S10network) for the OS disk provisioned over FCoE.

Issue: Filesystems other than '/' wouldn't mount automatically during system bootup although /etc/fstab had the required entries.

Fix: The option _rnetdev was added to all filesystems besides the '/' to make it mount automatically during system bootup.

This resolved the issue with the system indicating either 'unknown' or 'runlevel 6' when booted up. This also fixed the automatic start of network service which wouldn't start automatically.

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