Impermanent Sysinit runlevel? (solved)

[mikb]

I am having a weird problem with booting the system.

I use genkernel to generate the initramfs for my system.

The kernel command line contains the parameter

Code: Select all

real_init=/sbin/openrc-init

What happens is I can see the system enter the Sysinit runlevel, and run the following services:

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$ rc-update show sysinit
              cgroups | sysinit
                devfs | sysinit
                dmesg | sysinit
    kmod-static-nodes | sysinit
                sysfs | sysinit
 systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev | sysinit
                 udev | sysinit
          udev-settle | sysinit
         udev-trigger | sysinit

All complete successfully.

But when the system moves to the boot and default runlevels, all of that initialization state is lost. All services are seen as not started.

The consequence of this is that NetworkManager cannot see the WiFi adapter and blocks, the display manager will not start, laptop-mode will not start, and the system displays all sorts of quirky behaviours (like horrible display flicker),

starting udev-trigger manually once the system has got to default and is in multi-user will cause NetworkManager to find the Wifi adapter, which will allow the display manager to start manually, but that's the only workaround I have found, and I am not sure it isn't having unintended consequences.


I'm at a loss how to even debug this (after all, there is no openrc logging at sysinit), can anyone offer suggestions of things to try?

[grknight]

The current running state information is stored at /run/openrc/

Often /run is a tmpfs so this should be created very early to write to.

genkernel's initramfs looks to do this, as it should, early on in its linuxrc file.

If for some reason it is reset or over-mounted, then this info could be lost/hidden.

One thing that also should be there is /run/udev.pid as udev is started in sysinit.

I have run openrc-init longer than most have and never had such an issue.

[mikb]

You were correct. Armed with the hypothesis that /run was being remounted, I went digging through the many places in startup where things get mounted.

Sure enough localmount mounts everything in /etc/fstab that isn't marked "noauto", and that included a line mounting /run with noatime.

Removing that line from /etc/fstab has restored normal operation, with no apparent ill effects

Thank you!