Can't get a recent domU gentoo

[Manu311]

Hello,

for years I've tried to get a working (more recent than 3.8) kernel on my vservers.
Now recently my provider started to enable vnc for new servers, so now that I got a new server, I can finally see the output during boot up. And that helped me .... not a bit.
I've tried numerous kernel configs. Both configured by hand, as well as the stage 4 kernel and the config of the live-disk they provided. And nothing worked.
The section where bootup stops is also different for different configs.
E.g. for the stage4 kernel (and with initcall_debug, sched_debug, debug, ignore_loglevel) the last line is "calling raid6_select_algo...".
With other kernels it usually at least ends with a "Freeing unused kernel memory". Right after "initcall regulator_init_complete".

I basically have not a single idea anymore what to try and I really don't want to switch to a different distribution (as they provide working images for those). You might suggest whatever you want, I don't have any problems wiping the drive.

I guess some information could be useful, so here's the dmesg of the booting live-media they provided: https://paste.pound-python.org/show/OEMlGrN2f93KFWrPUO2q/

[Hu]

If they provide a working kernel for some other distribution, I suggest that you use it as a reference. First try to make the system boot with their kernel and your filesystems. If that works, switch to a vanilla kernel built off their kernel configuration, to rule out that they cheated by using a patched kernel that was specially modified to work in their environment. If that works, begin modifying the kernel configuration to add any missing features you want and drop features you do not want. Track your work carefully here, in case you stumble into a broken configuration. It would be quite frustrating to need to roll back good changes just to eliminate one misstep. With luck and patience, you can end up with a kernel customized as you want.

[Manu311]

I wonder if there's a big enough difference between the live-cds kernel and one of their distributions that this would help.
Anyways, I used their kernel for gentoo when they officially offered it. But it's a pretty old version without devtmpfs in the kernel (so upgrading didn't work without compiling my own).
Also they're not providing me configs (neither in /proc/config.gz nor /etc/kernels), if there's another place, I don't know of it.
The kernel itself was not on my drive, but somewhere on their host iirc.

I could probably try to copy my old 3.8 kernel, which is working on one of their other vservers. That should boot, but I'm unable to build a more recent kernel which boots.

//EDIT:
I tried said (3.8.6) kernel, and it booted. But I can't compile a more recent kernel based on that config.

[ct85711]

I don't know of any importance to the /etc/kernels. The kernel sources are usually in the /usr/src/, the other possibility is check in the /boot (make sure it is mounted) as the kernel config is often copied there. Once we have a copy of the config, we can work on updating it for a newer kernel.

Worst case, we can help you make a new config based on what modules is running on the old config and the output of like lsmod & lspci & lsusb (if applicable). This could possibly be helped by using like one of the "kitchen sink" kernel configs that throws everything in as a base to start from. Now like Hu mentioned, if they added their own patches to the kernel would make it more difficult as you'd have to work out what those patches did in addition.

[Manu311]

I don't think /etc/kernels actually does anything. From my experience it's just a place where your config get's copied, and I started collecting different ones there on my server now.
Kernel sources are indeed at /usr/src, but they don't really help me here. And I don't remember any kernel compiling process in which configs were stored at /boot. There's a kernel option (which I usually enable) which puts your config at /proc/config.gz.
I could provide the kernel config of the 3.8.6 kernel which works (currently I am again trying to just use that config without any changes for 4.14, but I'm very sure it won't boot).
As for kitchen sink kernels, I assume the generic stage-4 kernel is pretty sinky. And the same should be true for the live-cd - and neither of them boots.

//EDIT: Here it is: https://pastebin.com/JtuMT8wb

[Manu311]

Still no working, more recent kernel

But funnily enough, with the 4.14.61 kernel (in contrast to 4.14.52) I now get this:
https://imgur.com/fyeLfxI
So I assume the system might actually now boot (it reacts to ctrl-alt-del), but some wrong framebuffer-/display-driver gets loaded.
However I wasn't able to (blindly) login.

EDIT:
I've now given up and installed Debian on the server.