"F"

failed to initialize adapter

Cause

Using an Adaptec AHA-154x Cx SCSI HBA during installation of Solaris 2.x x86, you may see the message during the mdb device probe that says failed to initialize adapter after the probe has correctly identified the card. There are a variety of reasons for this error, but in all cases the error is because of misconfiguring the card.

Action

To correct the problem, press Ctrl-a during boot of the computer to enter the 154x BIOS configuration utility. Choose the Configure/View Host Adapter Settings option, then press the F6 key to return the adapter to its factory default settings.

After doing this, reconfigure the adapter per the instructions contained in the x86 Device Configuration Guide or Driver Update Guide if applicable. It is especially important that the adapter be configured to use DMA 6. Note that it defaults to DMA 5 and must be changed.

fbconsole: ioctl SRIOCSREDIR: Device Busy.

Cause

When starting Openwindows from the command line, the following error message is echoed on the Solaris "Welcome" screen: fbconsole: ioctl SRIOCSREDIR: Device Busy

Once inside Openwindows, The following message is displayed in the background windows and when starting cmdtool -C:

SYSTEM WARNING: Object 0x340f8, Device busy, ioctl SRIOCSREDIR returned -1, attempt to make tty the console failed (Tty package)

Action

Openwindows was probably started in the background (using the "&"). Exit Openwindows, and run the command in foreground: /usr/openwin/bin/openwin

If this doesn't help, then perhaps some daemon or process is "holding" the console. Type the command: fuser /dev/console.

A list of process id's is returned. Examine these processes to determine if an application has hold of the console (using the ps(1) command, will help).

fd0: unformatted diskette or no diskette in the drive

Cause

This message appears on the system console to indicate that the floppy driver fd(4) could not read the label on a diskette. Usually this is either because a new diskette has not yet been formatted, or a formatted diskette has become corrupted. This message often appears along with "read failed" and "bad format" messages after volcheck(1) is run.

Action

If you are certain that the diskette contains no data, run fdformat -d to format the diskette in DOS format. (You can also format a diskette in UFS format if you like, although then it cannot be transported to most other systems.) When the diskette is formatted, you can write on it, if it was not corrupted beyond repair.

File descriptor in bad state

Cause

Either a file descriptor refers to no open file or a read request was made to a file that is open only for writing.

Technical Notes

The symbolic name for this error is EBADFD, errno=81.

File exists

Cause

The name of an existing file was mentioned in an inappropriate context. For example, establishing a link to an existing file, or overwriting an existing file are not allowed when the csh(1) noclobber option is set.

Action

Look at the names of files in the directory, then try again with a different name or after renaming or removing the existing file.

Technical Notes

The symbolic name for this error is EEXIST, errno=17.

File locking deadlock

Cause

This is a programming problem, in some cases unavoidable.

Action

All a user can do is restart the program and hope deadlock does not reoccur.

Technical Notes

In the file locking subsystem, two processes tried to modify some lock at the same time. In the multithreading subsystem, two threads became deadlocked and could not continue. When a program using the threads library encounters this error, it should restart the deadlocked threads.

The symbolic name for this error is EDEADLOCK, errno=56.

filemgr: mknod: Permission denied

Cause

File Manager issues this message and fails to come up whenever the /tmp/.removable directory is owned by another user and is not 1777 mode. This can happen, for example, when multiple users share a workstation.

Action

Have the original owner change the mode ((chmod(1)) of this file back to 1777, its default creation mode. Rebooting the workstation also resolves this problem.

Technical Notes

This is a known problem that was fixed in Solaris 2.4.

File name too long

Cause

The specified file name has too many characters.

Action

If a file name or path name component is too long, devise a shorter name. If the total path name is longer than PATH_MAX characters, first change to an intermediate directory, then specify a shorter path name. Newly-created data will be lost unless written to another file with a shorter name.

Technical Notes

In a UFS or NFS-mounted UFS filesystem, the length of a path name component exceeds MAXNAMLEN (255) characters, or the total length of the path name exceeds PATH_MAX (1024) characters. In a System V filesystem, the length of a path name component exceeds NAME_MAX (14) characters while no-truncation mode is in effect. These values are defined in the /usr/include/limits.h file.

The symbolic name for this error is ENAMETOOLONG, errno=78.

file system full

Cause

During login file system full errors are seen and login fails with the message No utmpx entry.

See Also

See No utmpx entry, below.

FILE SYSTEM STATE IN SUPERBLOCK IS WRONG; FIX?

Cause

The fsck(1M) command has just checked a filesystem, and has determined that the filesystem is clean. The filesystem's superblock, however, still thinks the filesystem is "dirty" in some way.

Action

If you believe that the filesystem is adequately repaired, answer yes to mark the filesystem as clean.

Technical Notes

Different "dirty" filesystem types are listed in /usr/include/sys/fs/ufs_fs.h, and include FSACTIVE, FSBAD, FSFIX, FSLOG, and FSSUSPEND.

See Also

For more information on superblocks, see the section on checking filesystem integrity in the System Administration Guide, Volume I. If you are using the AnswerBook, "bad superblock" is a good search string.

File table overflow

Cause

The kernel file table is full because too many files are open on the system. Temporarily, no more files can be opened. New data created under this condition will probably be lost.

Action

Simply waiting often gives the system time to close files. However, if this message occurs often, reconfigure the kernel to allow more open files. To increase the size of the file table in Solaris 2, increase the value of maxusers in the /etc/system file. The default maxusers value is the amount of main memory in MB, minus 2.

Technical Notes

The symbolic name for this error is ENFILE, errno=23.

File too large

Cause

The file size exceeded the limit specified by ulimit(1), or the file size exceeds the maximum supported by the file system. New data created under this condition will probably be lost.

Action

In the C shell, use the limit(1) command to see or set the default file size. In the Bourne or Korn shells, use the ulimit -a command. Even when the shells claim that the file size is unlimited, in fact the system limit is FCHR_MAX (usually 1 gigabyte).

Technical Notes

The symbolic name for this error is EFBIG, errno=27.

FREE BLK COUNT(S) WRONG IN SUPERBLK SALVAGE?

Cause

During phase 5, fsck(1M) detected that the actual number of free blocks in the filesystem did not match the superblock's free block count. The df(1M) command accesses this free block count when measuring filesystem capacity.

Action

Generally you can answer yes to this question without harming the filesystem.

See Also

For more information on superblocks, see the section on checking filesystem integrity in the System Administration Guide, Volume I. If you are using the AnswerBook, "bad superblock" is a good search string.

fsck: Can't open /dev/dsk/string

Cause

The fsck(1M) command cannot open the disk device, because although a similar filesystem exists, the partition specified does not.

Action

Run the mount(1M) or the format(1M) command to see what filesystems are configured on the machine. Then run fsck(1M) again on an existing partition.

fsck: Can't stat /dev/dsk/string

Cause

The fsck(1M) command cannot open the disk device, because the specified filesystem does not exist.

Action

Run the mount(1M) or the format(1M) command to see what filesystems are configured on the machine. Then run fsck(1M) again on an existing filesystem.

ftp: ftp/tcp: unknown service

Cause

The user was getting the error. User was using no naming service and the services file looked fine. User could FTP as root but not as a normal user.

Action

Permissions on the /etc/services file were wrong. User changed them to read access for everyone (644) to correct the problem.

fw_ipinput: q fc5fddc0:illegal interface

Cause

The FW-1 kernel module displays the error message when a new network interface has been added to the FW-1 system while fwd is running.

Action

To resolve this problem, run the following to reinstall the FW kernel and reinstall the security policy:

# fw ctl uninstall
# fw ctl install
# fw fetch localhost

fwm: no license

Cause

Firewall-1, version 2.1 and produces the message when the fwstart command is issued or fwm is started from the command line.

There are two possible reasons for this.

The first is when a firewall module is installed without a control station on the same machine, the messages are displayed on the console (under Unix) or in the event log (under WinNT)

The second is that the messages may be legitimate. You may find that fwm has not started and you cannot do some crucial tasks. One problem may be that the license is issued for the wrong hostid.

Action

Check that the license daemon is running on the server. Then...

Case one: Workaround: Ignore the messages. Solution: Upgrade to 2.1c or above.

Case two: To check for a misassigned license, run the command hostid(1). Your hostid is displayed.

Now run the command fw printlic. You will see output like this...

This is FireWall-1 Version 2.1
Type             Expiration Features
id-649f152b	 never	    stdlight