[gentoo-user] Re: Error during boot up.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-12-20, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote:

> I don't think it would help.  It's the speed that is the problem. It was
> almost impossible to read anything with my old CPU. It's nothing but a
> blur with this new one.  Mostly, I saw red letters and what looked like
> the word "error". 
>
> If it will log the error, that is best because I can copy and paste it
> into a search engine and find out what it means and how to fix it, if I
> don't figure it out on my own.  May help someone else reading this tho.  ;-)

With most more modern motherboards this is probably not an option, but
when I'm troubleshooting that sort of thing, I tell the kernel to use
a serial console. I connect something to the serial port that logs the
data to a file (usually a second Linux machine running C-Kermit, but
there are untold other options), and Bob's your uncle.

With GRUB, you can usually hit <some character> to stop autoboot, then
<some other character> to edit the default boot options to add the
"console=" incantation.

If you really want to geek out, you can configure GRUB to use the
serial console also (but that's not really needed for your situation).

So far, I've been able to avoid buying a motherboard without at least
one plain-old-UART on it.  These days you usually have to provide your
own ribbon-cable-DB9 bracket, but it's still a lifesaver for obscure
kernel problems.

Another option is 'netconsole':

   https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netconsole

It doesn't kick in as early as a serial-console does, but it it might
be early enough if the NIC driver and netconsole drivers are compiled
into the kernel as opposed to being a loadable module.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Everybody is going
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