UNIXPC operating sans run-level; HOW?

[Thad P Floryan]

Anyone ever see UNIX operating withOUT being in a run-level?  Seriously.

Had a major power failure here, and the UPS on two systems pooped-out before
I could get to the systems and perform an orderly shutdown.

Rebooting after power was restored caused the systems to undergo a forced
second reboot each time, and attempts to shutdown afterwards WOULDN'T shutdown
and, instead, left me at a "pseudo" root prompt but still logged-in under the
username I was just-prior logged in as (sic).  Entering a ^D then forced a
prompt for "Enter run level: " (as from ``init''), but things still weren't
right afterwards.

ONLY after about 5 rapid shutdowns and reboots did things appear to return to
normal (and no files lost), but EVERY time before things returned to normal I
noticed the following:

	$ who -r
	$

Yes, that's correct, NO runlevel! The output should have been something like:

	$ who -r
	   .      run-level 2  Dec 12 19:43    2   0   S
	$

which it became (again) after the 5th (or so) reboot.

The OTHER weird occurrence (until the system automagically re-acquired a
run-level), was that logging in via any method (console, RS-232, StarLAN,
on-board modem) would cause the following display (and the parameters, as
displayed, do NOT exist in ANY .profile on the systems or in /etc/profile
or in /etc/localprofile ):

	Welcome to ThadLABS System #2, AT&T UNIX System V, Release 3.51

	Please login: thad
	Password:
	EDITOR=/bin/ed
	FCEDIT=/bin/ed
	HOME=/u/thad
	IFS=    

	LOGNAME=thad
	MAIL=/usr/mail/thad
	MAILCHECK=600
	PATH=:/bin:/usr/bin
	PPID=351
	PS2=> 
	PS3=#? 
	RANDOM=28844
	SECONDS=2
	SHELL=/bin/ksh
	TMOUT=0
	_=3

	Please type the terminal name and press RETURN:  dt80

	           1% of the storage space is available.

	ksh 351/352> 


Except for the "lack" of a runlevel (before the problem cleared up) and the
weird output during login, the systems otherwise "felt" like they were acting
normally except for the troublesome shutdowns and reboots.

Any ideas as to what might have caused this and why several shutdown & reboot
cyles would have cleared up the symptoms?  The systems that experienced these
anomalies were UNIXPCs (aka 7300 aka 3B1) running versions 3.51 and 3.51a of
the SysV kernel (for the UNIXPC).

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]