[Mageia-dev] Fwd: Re: M3 won't complete boot after update

Thu Sep 27 11:15:51 CEST 2012

'Twas brillig, and Anne Wilson at 27/09/12 09:46 did gyre and gimble:
+> On 26/09/12 16:12, Marja van Waes wrote:
+>> Can you try doing "systemctl show prefdm.service | grep 
+>> ActiveEnter.*Mono" after a fresh boot.
+> 
+>> I don't need to know the results, just whether it's non-zero or 
+>> still at 0.
+> 
+>> Assuming it's still at zero, then we've not even tried to start the
+>> graphical server.
+> 
+>> I suspect this is because we're considering your remote mounts as 
+>> critical to the user sessions (i.e. think of /home on NFS). 
+>> Normally, putting nofail in the fstab is enough to break this 
+>> linkage.
+> 
+>> Can you comment out all remote mounts entirely and see if you can 
+>> boot.
+> 
+>> If it still fails, then try starting prefdm.service manually 
+>> (systemctl start prefdm.service) and see what happens.
+> 
+> At this point I'm probably stuck.  I've been doing these tests by
+> forcing a level 1 boot, but now even that may not be possible.  These
+> are the latest boot messages:
+
+Does it work when forcing a runlevel 3 boot instead. This is closer to a
+proper boot and likely a better testing environment. I presume the
+getty's are showing for you in level 3?
+
+> broadcom-wl (....)Already exists on this kernel [OK]
+> Checking for new hardwareWelcome to rescue mode! Type "systemctl
+> default" or ^D to enter default mode ##Yes, that's how it looks, lines
+> joined.
+
+Interesting that they are joined up...
+
+> Type "journalctl" to show system logs. Type "systemctl reboot" to
+> reboot. [OK]
+> ##didn't do any of these as I was not watching the screen
+> 
+> Failed to issue method call: Transaction is destructive.
+
+I've seen this before, but it's basically indicative of some kind of
+transaction ordering deadlock. I'll investigate to see if I can
+reproduce that here.
+
+I have seen it when you have SINGLE=/sbin/sulogin rather than
+SINGLE=/sbin/sushell in /etc/sysconfig/init.
+
+> Last resort -
+> 
+> I edited out the "splash quiet" and called for level 1 again.  This
+> time it completes, very quickly.
+> 
+> 'systemctl show prefdm.service | grep ActiveEnter.*Mono" ' simply
+> returns to the prompt.
+
+This shouldn't happen. These should be printed even if they have zero
+values I believe, although with a level 1 or level 3 boot this might not
+be the case (I've not tested). It would certainly *always* be 0 if they
+are shown tho',
+
+The results of this test are only really valuable if you do a normal
+boot to runlevel 5 as this is when the service should be started.
+
+What I'm trying to work out here is if the job relating to starting the
+prefdm.service had to be ejected due to some kind of conflict.
+
+If there is a conflict then the values will be 0 and this will explain
+why your graphical desktop does not start.
+
+> All the borg2 mounts are commented out for now.
+> 
+>> If it still fails, then try starting prefdm.service manually 
+>> (systemctl start prefdm.service) and see what happens.
+> 
+> Nothing at all happens.  It returns to the prompt.
+
+This is curious. Does this also occur at runelevel 3? What does
+systemctl status prefdm.service tell you after it returns you to the prompt?
+
+Is there anything useful in the kdm log file about why kdm failed to
+launch X11?
+
+> We have all spent a lot of time on this.  There are files on the
+> netbook that I must recover, so now it's decision time.  It would
+> probably be easier and quicker to grab the latest image (in which case
+> can you remind me where to go for that) but I am willing to continue
+> if there is any possibility that what we discover could save grief for
+> others.
+> 
+> What do you think?
+
+Plenty more to debug if you want to continue.
+
+Col
+
+
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
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+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
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+