On 2022-05-06 12:00 -04, Nick Holland <n...@holland-consulting.net> wrote: > here's a weird one. > > HP T430 Thin Client, reloaded with OpenBSD. > In it's intended use, it runs Linux in BIOS boot mode. OpenBSD's > installer will boot that way, but the kernel is unable to see the > 16g storage device. In UEFI boot mode, OpenBSD works well, > including running X. This machine has ONLY HDMI and DisplayPort > video connections (one each). There's no com port on the box for > an alternative view of what is going on. > > The problem comes when I put them to work without a monitor. > > The machine will boot fine, run fine...but sysupgrade fails to upgrade > the system. It downloads the intended files, it reboots, and a few > moments later, it's back up and running -- the old kernel. Plug an > HDMI monitor in, run sysupgrade again, and it sees the upgrade marker > and does the upgrade. Textbook Heisenbug :-/ > > For giggles, I did a sysupgrade -k (keep the files), let it reboot, > in the root directory was bsd.upgrade as expected. I copied
Not realy, -k keeps stuff in /home/_sysupgrade. bsd.upgrade gets deleted by the installer. My guess is bsd.rd panics when there is not monitor plugged in. You could plug in a monitor to see why it panics, oh wait... :P > bsd.upgrade to /bsd, forcing it one way or another to run > bsd.upgrade ... and the result was a hung system. Never came back > after the reboot, no idea why. When I moved it to be near an HDMI > monitor, it promptly booted, complained about permissions on > bsd.upgrade, but upgraded perfectly (but I am not sure which of > the two copies of the kernel it used). > > What can I do to help provide info to determine what is going on > here? I can't debug this, but I can tell you a bit about the interaction between sysupgrade(8), the bootloader and the installer in bsd.rd. >From there you can figure out how for you got. sysupgrade downloads the sets into /home/_sysupgrade and verifies them. Then it creates /auto_upgrade.conf and installs /home/_sysupgrade/bsd.rd as /bsd.upgrade. so bsd.upgrade is a bsd.rd, there is nothing special about it. /bsd.upgrade is installed with mode 0700. Then it execs reboot. The bootloader checks if there is an executable(!) /bsd.upgrade available, if so it does a chmod u-x /bsd.upgrade and boots it. If not it consults /etc/boot.conf and boots /bsd or whatever /etc/boot.conf says. The installer then checks if this is an unattended upgrade by checking if bsd.upgrade and auto_upgrade.conf are present. If so it runs an unattended upgrade. Very early in that process, after checking the disks and mounting all partitions, the installer delets bsd.upgrade and auto_upgrade.conf. So, if you end up with a /bsd.upgrade on the running system that is still mode 0700, your bootloader is on the fritz. If you have a /bsd.upgrade that's 0600 your bootloader found the kernel and tried to boot it, but the installer didn't get very far. If there is no /bsd.upgrade after a reboot and no email to root the installer got rebooted by a watchdog process, otherwise you got an email to root detailing the upgrade process. -- I'm not entirely sure you are real.
