From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76FD3138CD3 for ; Thu, 28 May 2015 06:16:03 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 70AE5E0920; Thu, 28 May 2015 06:15:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail0131.smtp25.com (mail0131.smtp25.com [75.126.84.131]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2F5A8E0874 for ; Thu, 28 May 2015 06:15:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ccs.covici.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ccs.covici.com (8.14.9/8.14.8) with ESMTP id t4S6FsLM030996 for ; Thu, 28 May 2015 02:15:54 -0400 From: covici@ccs.covici.com To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] problems debugging a systemd problem In-reply-to: References: <28995.1432789799@ccs.covici.com> Comments: In-reply-to =?us-ascii?Q?=3D=3FUTF-8=3FB=3FQ2FuZWsgUGVsw6FleiBWY?= =?us-ascii?Q?Wxkw6lz=3F=3D?= message dated "Thu, 28 May 2015 00:38:38 -0500." X-Mailer: MH-E 8.5; nmh 1.6; GNU Emacs 23.4.1 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 02:15:54 -0400 Message-ID: <30995.1432793754@ccs.covici.com> X-SpamH-OriginatingIP: 70.109.53.110 X-SpamH-Filter: d-out-001.smtp25.com-t4S6Fs1Q028176 X-Archives-Salt: 1c95a476-010d-4f27-9031-e1fcfb6e5732 X-Archives-Hash: 907e4575c7480dc0d7307e46ee73996c Canek Pel=C3=A1ez Vald=C3=A9s wrote: > On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 12:09 AM, wrote: > > > > Hi folks. I spent a very frustrating time last night trying to figure > > out why my systemd would not boot using systemd. I am using dracut and > > its version is 041r2. Now what was happening is that the system would > > get to the pre-init-queue -- and I even set the rd.break there, but > > after that the system would not boot -- when I used debug it endlessly > > said calling setl forever. Now it turned out that the problem was that > > I had mistyped an rd.lv=3D line -- instead of ssd-files/usr I had > > ssd-files/-usr . Now, what I would like to know is how could I tell > > that it was trying to look for a non-existent lv? At the point of the > > break. no lvm volumes were active, although strangely enough I saw a > > e2fsck for the real root file system which was an lvm volume. I am > > finding its generally hard to debug systemd problems, several other > > times the system just sat there till I figured it out some other way. > > > > Any observations on this would be appreciated, but I don't want to get > > into a flame war, I just want to minimize the down time. >=20 > Usually if you can get an emergency shell by adding "emergency" to the > kernel command line (both GRUB and Gummiboot allow you to edit the kernel > command line), then is easy to see what the problem is. My experience with > LVM has been consistently pretty awful, which is why I don't use in any of > my machines, but I suppose a systemctl --all --full will tell you what un= it > files have failed, and then you can journalctl -b -u them. Also journalctl > -b by itself would tell you many times what the problem is. >=20 > The only problem with the emergency shell is that sometimes is too early = in > the boot process for the keyboard drivers to have been loaded, but that is > easily solved by adding a drivers+=3D"" line to a conf file > in /etc/dracut.conf.d. >=20 > Also, and I cannot stress this enough, you never delete your old (and > working) kernel+initramfs until you have tested the new one. I would also > recommend to leave the entries for the old kernel+initramfs in the > GRUB/Gummiboot menu, but you can manage without them. >=20 > Finally, and this is tooting my own horn, maybe you could try kerninst[1]? > It's a little script I started a couple of years ago to automatically > compile and install my kernels and generate my initramfs'. I use it in all > my machines, and now my kernel update is just a matter of eselecting the > new version, and running kerninst. I follow ~amd64 vanilla-sources, so th= is > is roughly every week or two. >=20 > Beware, though, that I don't use LVM nor RAID nor Luks, but in theory if > you have a working kernel+dracut+[grub|gummitboot] configuration, it shou= ld > also work with them. Thanks for your quick reply, but I do have rd.shell=3D1, but it did not drop to a shell,it just hung, so I could not do journalctl or anything -- the nearest break point was pre-initqueue which was maybe too early and the next one is pre-mount which it never got to. Unfortunately, I was in a position where I could not use an older kernel, because the older ones didn't have the configs to read gui type partitions-- I always keep several kernels around normally, but this was one of those transitional times when I was stuck. So do I need emergency aswell as rd.shell andis there any way to get a shell when the system appearsto be in some kind of a loop, like calling setl over andover again? --=20 Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici covici@ccs.covici.com