NW 5.1 Server won't boot, SYS volume full

(Last modified: 04Oct2002)

This document (10061257) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

goal

Bringing up a NetWare 5.1 Server when the SYS: volume is out of disk space

fact

NetWare 5.1

symptom

The SYS volume will not mount when the server is booted normally.

cause

The server is out of disk space ont he SYS volume.

fix

1. Rebooted the server and at the DOS prompt, from the C:\NWSERVER directory we ran the following command:

SERVER -NS -NA

When the server came up, it just had a colon prompt, there was no server name before the colon.

(NOTES: The -NS and -NA switches cause a NetWare server to load without running it's STARTUP.NCF and it's AUTOEXEC.NCF. The startup.ncf file is much like a config.sys file is on a DOS/Windows based machine. The autoexec.ncf file is much like an autoexec.bat file on a DOS/Windows based machine.)

2. After the server came up to the console prompt the administrator typed in the following command:

LOADSTAGE 1

(NOTES: For more information on the load stages in NetWare 5.x see the following document:
Novell NetWare 5.X Loadstage Descriptions

3. Next the administrator loaded the disk drivers that would have been loaded in the STARTUP.NCF file. The STARTUP.NCF file is almost always in the C:\NWSERVER directory. The lines from the STARTUP.NCF file that load the disk drivers are the ones that load *.CDM *.HAM modules.

4. After loading these modules we ran VREPAIR, and specified that we wanted to purge deleted files on the SYS: volume. This option is available under "Set VRepair options".

(NOTES: The VREPAIR.NLM file is located C:\NWSERVER directory. To load vrepair we type in the command

LOAD C:\NWSERVER\VREPAIR.NLM

The purpose behind running VREPAIR was to (a.) See that the volume was alright (b.) See if we could purge deleted files to attempt to free up disk space. In this scenario, VREPAIR did not find any files to purge, but it was still worth a shot, and good to know the volume was in good shape.)

5. After the VREPAIR on the SYS volume, the administrator typed the following command at the console prompt:

MOUNT SYS:

The SYS: volume did mount, although we did get an error that the swap file could not initialize.

6. After mounting the SYS: volume, the administrator wanted to delete files from the SYS: volume. The administrator needed a shell solution. They decided to use TBOX6.NLM which is a version of the popular toolbox NLM that does not require NDS authentication. This utility is no longer available from Novell to the public. So if you can't get your hands on TBOX6.NLM then use the JCMD NLM utility which is much like toobox. The JCMD NLM utility is available at www.netwarefiles.com. The JCMD utility gives the DIR and the DEL functions which are necessary for navigating and deleting files from a NetWare console.

7. After deleting sufficient space from the SYS: volume, the administrator rebooted the NetWare server, and got a client connection to the server, and continued to free up disk space.

document

Document Title:	NW 5.1 Server won't boot, SYS volume full
Document ID:	10061257
Solution ID:	NOVL43266
Creation Date:	21Mar2001
Modified Date:	04Oct2002
Novell Product Class:	NetWare

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