Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: covici@××××××××××.com
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] problems debugging a systemd problem
Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 14:12:34
Message-Id: 23855.1432822343@ccs.covici.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] problems debugging a systemd problem by Rich Freeman
1 Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
2
3 > On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 2:15 AM, <covici@××××××××××.com> wrote:
4 > >
5 > > Thanks for your quick reply, but I do have rd.shell=1, but it did not
6 > > drop to a shell,it just hung, so I could not do journalctl or anything
7 > > -- the nearest break point was pre-initqueue which was maybe too early
8 > > and the next one is pre-mount which it never got to.
9 >
10 > It could very well be a dracut bug (consider bringing the issue to
11 > them), but how long did you wait while it was looping. I've seen
12 > cases where dracut looped for a few minutes before dropping to a
13 > shell. There are a few loops where dracut is waiting for udev to
14 > detect all devices, and if it is looking for a device that will never
15 > appear, then it will potentially loop forever. There should be a
16 > timeout, but I don't know what it is set to by default.
17 >
18 > Once you get a shell you should be able to inspect the
19 > journal/dmesg/etc and try to see what is going on.
20 >
21 > Sure, you could have booted a rescue CD, but I don't see what it would
22 > have gained you as far as troubleshooting the problem with your
23 > initramfs (though it would have allowed you to rebuild it if the
24 > initramfs itself was broken, or try out a different version/etc). As
25 > you point out any logs it creates are stored in tmpfs or ramfs - that
26 > is true of just about any initramfs since it won't have any place to
27 > store them until it mounts root.
28 >
29 > I don't know if setting the rescue target would have helped. I think
30 > that the behavior of that option is to still boot to your root
31 > filesystem and THEN drop to a shell. If you want to force a rescue
32 > shell within the initramfs you need to use rd.break or such, and as
33 > you point out you need to find the right breakpoint for this.
34 >
35 > I'd suggest talking to the dracut devs about how it should have
36 > behaved in those circumstances. At the very least they might be able
37 > to improve the error reporting.
38
39 Thanks, so how would I get in touch with dracut devs?
40
41 --
42 Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
43 How do
44 you spend it?
45
46 John Covici
47 covici@××××××××××.com