Troubleshooting 34
• Workaround—Manually stop the 64-bit master agent and start the 32-bit version as follows:
# /etc/init.d/init.sma stop
# /usr/sfw/sbin/i86/snmpd
Then, restart the agents. The agents’ status might have to be cleared with SMF if they have entered
the maintenance state:
# svcadm disable agent
# svcadm clear agent
# svcadm enable agent
Basic troubleshooting techniques
The following basic tools and techniques are useful for investigating issues with Solaris deployment.
Shell prompt
An interactive shell is the primary tool for troubleshooting deployment issues that occur after the miniroot
has booted. In some cases, early failures cause the console to automatically display a shell prompt.
Otherwise, a shell can usually be started when necessary.
If X Windows is running, a terminal window can be opened by right-clicking on the background, and
then selecting the appropriate item from the menu. If the character mode installer is running, proceed
through the prompts until an option to exit appears. Exiting drops the console to a shell prompt.
Network verification
Problems with network deployments can often be traced to errors in network configuration or
typographical errors in network paths. The Solaris miniroot contains a variety of tools and utilities that can
be used to diagnose such problems.
For example, ifconfig(1M) can be used to verify network parameters and ping(1M) can be used to test
network connectivity to an install server. Utilities such as df(1M) or mount(1M) can be used to determine
which NFS filesystems have been mounted. If an NFS share is unexpectedly not mounted, an attempt to
manually mount it can be used to determine why the mount is failing.
GRUB command line
For investigating issues with GRUB, the GRUB command line is often useful. The command line can also
be used for fine-tuning commands in menu.lst without having to rebuild ISO images or restart RDP jobs.
At the GRUB menu, press the c key to display the GRUB command line. Under certain circumstances,
GRUB might not display a menu and is already in command-line mode.
For more information about using GRUB, see the GRUB documentation at http://www.gnu.org
.
Kernel debugger
In rare cases, the Solaris kernel debugger can be employed to determine the source of a problem. Some
types of configuration problems can result in a kernel panic shortly after the Solaris copyright banner
appears. In these cases, Solaris does not produce a crash dump and immediately reboots the system.
Often, there is no indication of the nature of the problem. By enabling the kernel debugger, Solaris
displays the debugger during a panic, instead of rebooting.
