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Bug 195661

Summary: default baselayout should boot with an headless linux
Product: Gentoo Linux Reporter: Sylvain BERTRAND <sylvain.bertrand>
Component: [OLD] baselayoutAssignee: Gentoo's Team for Core System packages <base-system>
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE    
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: High    
Version: 2007.0   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---

Description Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-10-12 21:36:13 UTC
default baselayout should be able to run a system with a Linux kernel which has the virtual terminals and vga console compiled out.
Comment 1 Roy Marples (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-10-13 00:11:10 UTC
afaik, we don't require any of that. What errors are you seeing?
Comment 2 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2007-10-13 02:40:18 UTC
i have systems booting just fine without any vga consoles
Comment 3 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-10-13 11:58:17 UTC
Indeed, it boots fine without VGA console, but it hangs if you compile out the virtual terminals from the Linux kernel.
Comment 4 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2007-10-13 15:57:46 UTC
i just tested and baselayout-2.0.0_rc4 boots perfectly fine for me
Comment 5 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-10-13 16:15:25 UTC
I'm using 1.12 baselayout. I have not seen the 2.0. If it works with the 2.0 baselayout for you, I will unmask and test it very soon.
Comment 6 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-10-15 19:50:16 UTC
Using baselayout 2.0.0-r5: boots fine with virtual terminal compiled in, hangs with virtual terminal compiled out.
Could you provide your inittab, your "eselect rc list" with the related conf.d files?
Comment 7 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2007-10-15 20:13:43 UTC
are you not using a serial console ?

the contents of inittab are irrelevant ... if you dont disable the agetty's in there, they'll simply error and get respawned, they wont hang the system
Comment 8 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-10-15 22:33:08 UTC
Only SSH.
Comment 9 Roy Marples (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-10-30 10:39:46 UTC
Could you be more explicit by "virtual terminal" as a quick grep of my kernel .config shows no symbols for "TERM"?

Also, at what point does it "hang"?
Comment 10 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-10-30 12:17:11 UTC
$linux_src/drivers/char/Kconfig, right at the beginning "virtual terminal" which deals with the VT symbol.
I cannot see where it hangs. And I'm using baselayout 2 which has no boot logs.
Comment 11 Roy Marples (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-10-31 23:35:31 UTC
rc6 has a boot logger. enable it in /etc/conf.d/rc RC_LOGGER=yes
It needs to be able to open a pty to start logging though, so if it's hanging in sysinit runlevel then you'll need an initramfs image to mount /dev, seed it and make / rw.

Then the log will be in /var/log/rc.log if writeable or /lib/rc/init.d/rc.log
Comment 12 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-11-01 10:45:26 UTC
Tested rc6 with logging: /var/log/rc.log does contain data for virtual terminal enabled kernel, but nothing for compiled out virtual terminal kernel.
Comment 13 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-11-01 11:01:31 UTC
bad news: before it could boot with vga output compiled out/virtual terminal compiled in, now it hangs without anything in /var/log/rc.log.
Comment 14 Roy Marples (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-11-01 11:23:33 UTC
Can you see the system booting over a serial console? If so, then put `set -x` near the top of the init*.sh files in /lib/rc/sh. If not then I have no idea about where to start debugging this as there's nothing to see going wrong.
Comment 15 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-11-01 21:12:13 UTC
I don't have a null-modem cable. I may have to order one on the net. Could you try to reproduce the issue on one of your systems? You just need to compile out the virtual terminal and vga console code from the linux kernel.
Comment 16 Roy Marples (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-11-01 22:10:32 UTC
I don't have any of that either, and I have issues getting qemu to work. Maybe I can try under virtualbox, but understand this is not a high priority for me to fix.

Try setting RC_INTERACTIVE=no in /etc/conf.d/rc
Comment 17 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-11-02 11:51:39 UTC
"RC_INTERACTIVE=no" is one of the first thing I did.
You cannot compile a test kernel where virtual terminal support and vga console support where compiled out?
Comment 18 Roy Marples (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-11-02 12:17:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #17)
> "RC_INTERACTIVE=no" is one of the first thing I did.
> You cannot compile a test kernel where virtual terminal support and vga console
> support where compiled out?

How would I see where it hangs or debug it without a console?
Comment 19 Sylvain BERTRAND 2007-11-02 12:54:46 UTC
First you should try to compile out virtual terminal and vga console from the kernel to see if the issue can be reproduced elsewhere than on my system. If so, you could trace the init process using a regular text file. You start using gross granularity at first for you text file messages, then get finer granularity in order to narrow down the issue.