Hi, genkernel keeps a very detailed log at /run/iniramfs/gksoreport.txt. (or similar)
When it exits to the cant find root prompt, type "shell" and you can read/save the report. BillK On 15/5/21 7:10 am, mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com wrote: > --"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their > political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political > democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special > privilege." Tommy Douglas > > > > > May 14, 2021, 15:15 by john.bli...@gmail.com: > >> n >> >> >> On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 2:36 AM John Covici <> cov...@ccs.covici.com> > >> wrote: >> >>> I would look in the grub.cfg and give us exactly what is in the stanza >>> you are using, including where it thinks the root file system is, >>> etc. Also, see if there is any genkernel option to get some debugging >>> info out of the initrd, I know using dracut you can get breakpoints >>> during the process and see how its doing. >>> >> Tried dracut. No change. >> >> Added the kernel command line debug options (#3 in “Identifying your problem >> area” in ‘man dracut’). No change. >> >> Feeling peevish, I made a file of random junk using dd if=/dev/random >> of=initrd.img count=4096. Then supplied that pile of junk as the initrd. >> Again, no change. >> >> Then I supplied a nonexistent file name (xxx.img) as the initrd. This time >> I got a complaint: >> >> error: file ‘/xxx.img’ not found. >> >> Press any key to continue... >> >> So, it’s getting as far as wanting to read the initrd, and is smart enough >> to tell whether the specified initrd actually exists on the specified boot >> partition. But it can’t actually be doing anything with the initrd, or it >> would have objected to the random junk I fed it. >> >> From > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_ramdisk#Implementation> , it >> appears that grub is in charge of loading both linux and the initrd into >> memory, then handing execution over to linux along with a pointer to the >> memory location of the initrd. >> >> I’ve observed that that no booting output comes out of linux, nor any >> complaints from linux about the nonsense contents I fed it from the random >> initrd I built. That suggests to me that grub has failed to load linux >> and/or the initrd into memory, or that it's failed to hand execution control >> to linux. >> >> Next step: learned how to run an interactive grub2 command shell. With full >> debugging turned on, it looks like grub2 can load the kernel image, and it >> looks like it loads the initrd as well. At least there are no complaints >> and the reported initrd size looks correct. >> >> But when I issue the boot command, grub2 issues a handful of mallocs and >> does a little token parsing, and then just stops... >> >> So it appears that the boot problem arises right around the handoff from >> grub2 to linux. Don’t know whether grub2 or linux has failed. I don’t know >> how to get either one to tell me more. >> >> John >> > Have you recompiled the kernel? Could be a random, erroneous write to disk > or something in the kernel compile didn't go well. I'd suggest also > rebuilding the initrd and reinstalling grub. I.e. I think there is likely a > kernel compile issue since it doesn't ever launch the kernel succesfully > either on autopilot or when you run grub interactive. Might also recompile > grub, perhaps there's a change in compiler options that produces an > incompatible (at least partially). I also suggest the rebuild so you can be > sure you have the right initrd and matching kernel. >
