baselayout - bugs(1.12), complaints, suggestions

cristi_p · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 3

after upgrading from baselayout-1.11 to baselayout 1.12.4-r2, my system doesn't boot correctly (is unusable).

Info: I'm having some raid partitions (type=fd), with LVM over them and then some logical volumes; plus some lvm partitions on normal ide disks and on SATA ones.

"High-level" problem is that i get with many directories unmounted - including /home :-(

Geting deeper to the real cause, it seems it's because the part that should try to mount various filesystems, using RC_VOLUME_ORDER is run *before* the necessary modules are loaded into the kernel (2.16.7), via modules.autolad/kernel-2.6. Which seems to me bogus.
Btw, during modules "autoload" I'm getting also a SATA driver module loaded which then has some LVM partitions too...

While at this, let me throw some other problems I'm seeing + suggestions:
a) services inside CRITICAL_SERVICES do not seem to be run taking into consideration their dependencies (bug https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70009 ?)
I thought this variable should be seen more as one that declares what are the services you should stop on, during system booting, if they're failing to load. And maybe to enforce some more proper service ordering (dependencies).
b) addon dm-start.sh gives me a warning like "local variable can be defined only inside a function" - related to statement "local x volume"
c) addon lvm-start.sh - needs to run vgscan and vgchange with parameter "--ignorelockingfailure" - that's another error I'm getting too.
d) I don't think you can use (or be enforced to use) a strict order inside RC_VOLUME_ORDER since you probably *can* have some circular references or additional dependencies on other services. I.e. what if you have a raid partition on some sata, usb or nfs (haven't checked if it's really possible) mounted disk?
e) all the ordering there is in /sbin/rc script (like using udev, mounting /dev/pts, mount raid/lvm/dm systems, starting irqbalance, etc) - *all* should be actually done as simple separate scripts with the appropriate ordering (like any other script in /etc/init.d/), and the '/sbin/rc' script should just start them, acording to their dependencies.
I think that also injecting during runtime some dependencies is a need for an init system.
f) I saw a thread on forums re: starting xdm pretty early in the boot process and I saw it happening on my box too. I don't think that is normal to do, unless you're telling the system also all the other dependencies your GUI env. (KDE, Gnome, etc) imight depend on (like network, mysql, etc) - which is difficult/impossible to do. So - sticking with xdm as one of the last services to start should be the preferred way to go with.

pactoo · Guru Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 553

similar problem: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-488560-highlight-.html

cristi_p · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 3

indeed, similar problem.

Though I also found some of the causes and gave suggestions. Waiting for the developer of baselayout scripts to kick in...

pactoo · Guru Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 553

Has not been reported by me, but there is a bug report: #144017

UberLord · Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 7:37 am Post subject:

You can try a patch for that here
http://dev.gentoo.org/~uberlord/baselayout/rc.patch

Not sure if that's going to go into baselayout immediately though.
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cristi_p · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 3

a) the patch - yes, probably for me it will work.
But I reverted to baselayout 1.11* and I'll probably keep it that way for some time
b) the patch probably won't solve the cases when the guys will have the need to mount first some volumes - someone said there are such cases. I suggested to run the mount stuff twice. See
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143767 - but twice means twice during the boot process, not twice during processing of RC_VOLUMES_ORDER (so that you can let the 'modules' run for example)
c) I'm still of the opinion that the /sbin/rc file shouldn't contain that much hardcoded run ordering (RC_VOLUMES versus CRITICAL_SERVICES) but just run scripts acording to their sorting needs.
d) re: the xdm stuff = yes, it's not a bug of baselayout it's a bug init.d/xdm itself. It should contain something like 'run_me_last;' :-)

e) if the policy is to change the title of the discussion to contain text "SOLVED" please feel free to add it or let me know if I should add it. Though while I'm glad someone wrote that patch, I can't say my problem is solved :-/