Dracut not loading drivers

[brundage]

Hia. I'm using dracut for initramfs with gentoo-kernel. It fails to early-load the drivers for my root drive. I can drop into the rescue shell, modprobe sdhci_pci, and continue booting. Any advice?

I asked nicely.

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0 aperture /root # cat /etc/dracut.conf.d/mmc_modules.conf 
add_drivers+=" mmc_core mmc_block sdhci sdhci_pci "
force_drivers+=" sdhci_pci "

It makes the initramfs correctly(?)

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dracut[D]: dracut cmdline:
dracut[D]: rd.driver.pre=sdhci_pci
dracut[D]: root=UUID=2c6e265d-827f-4419-9d9a-5bc3c50648b9 rootfstype=xfs rootflags=rw,noatime,attr2,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota

Here's the build output.

[pietinger]

Some very modern machines need SPI to be able to access MMC. Maybe have a look into the link of this chapter:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pieti ... Finalizing

Maybe boot with our GentooLiveCD and check with "lsmod" all loaded modules.

[brundage]

Some very modern machines need SPI to be able to access MMC. Maybe have a look into the link of this chapter:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pieti ... Finalizing

Maybe boot with our GentooLiveCD and check with "lsmod" all loaded modules.

I'm pretty sure it has all the necessary modules. The boot hangs and opens a rescue shell. All I have to do is load the module and exit. The machine continues to boot normally.

[pietinger]

[...] All I have to do is load the module [...]

Which module?

Maybe you are only missing the kernel command line parameter "rootwait" ?

Maybe there is also a bug in dracut not generating a needed rule/command? So, maybe we need a bug report for our developers.

[brundage]

[...] All I have to do is load the module [...]

Which module?

I can drop into the rescue shell, modprobe sdhci_pci, and continue booting. Any advice?

Maybe you are only missing the kernel command line parameter "rootwait" ?

It's my understanding that "rootwait" applies to the first stage of boot, while the kernel is waiting for its initial root device, which it gets. I'll try adding that and report back.

[grknight]

It's my understanding that "rootwait" applies to the first stage of boot, while the kernel is waiting for its initial root device, which it gets. I'll try adding that and report back.

rootwait is useless when used with most initramfs because the kernel has a "root" in the initramfs.

The default of dracut is rd.retry=180 (seconds). Meaning dracut will wait for a root device to come online within 3 minutes before dropping to a shell and reporting an issue.
There is also these options to consider:

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       rd.driver.pre=<drivername>[,<drivername>,...]
           force loading kernel module <drivername>. This parameter can be specified multiple times.

       rd.driver.post=<drivername>[,<drivername>,...]
           force loading kernel module <drivername> after all automatic loading modules have been loaded. This parameter can be specified multiple
           times.

See also man dracut.cmdline for what dracut can do on startup with kernel options.

[pietinger]

It's my understanding that "rootwait" applies to the first stage of boot, while the kernel is waiting for its initial root device, which it gets. I'll try adding that and report back.

rootwait is useless when used with most initramfs [...]

Yes, it is useless and only necessary if a kernel without an initramfs is used (so kernel does the mounting of the root paritition instead the init of the initramfs).

[brundage]

It's my understanding that "rootwait" applies to the first stage of boot, while the kernel is waiting for its initial root device, which it gets. I'll try adding that and report back.

rootwait is useless when used with most initramfs because the kernel has a "root" in the initramfs.

The default of dracut is rd.retry=180 (seconds). Meaning dracut will wait for a root device to come online within 3 minutes before dropping to a shell and reporting an issue.

This is consistent with my experience.

There is also these options to consider:

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       rd.driver.pre=<drivername>[,<drivername>,...]
           force loading kernel module <drivername>. This parameter can be specified multiple times.

       rd.driver.post=<drivername>[,<drivername>,...]
           force loading kernel module <drivername> after all automatic loading modules have been loaded. This parameter can be specified multiple
           times.

See also man dracut.cmdline for what dracut can do on startup with kernel options.

Dracut builds the image with the necessary module in rd.driver.pre.

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dracut[D]: dracut cmdline:
dracut[D]: rd.driver.pre=sdhci_pci
dracut[D]: root=UUID=2c6e265d-827f-4419-9d9a-5bc3c50648b9 rootfstype=xfs rootflags=rw,noatime,attr2,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota

Yet it does not load. I'll see if changing it to post does something.