Bug 1168664

Summary:	rc.sysinit needs to be more verbose
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6	Reporter:	Harald Hoyer <harald>
Component:	initscripts	Assignee:	Lukáš Nykrýn <lnykryn>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Jan Ščotka <jscotka>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	6.5	CC:	athompso, psklenar, rupatel
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	initscripts-9.03.47-1.el6	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:	Cause: Initscripts are not particularly chatty. Consequence: When there was a hang during boot, administrator were not able to figure out what is going on from the last message. Fix: We have added couple more messages to rc.sysinit, but more importantly we have added new option for kernel cmdline "rc.debug" Result: When this option is used on kernel cmdline, ALL initscripts are started with "set -x" and its output is redirected to kmsg. So administrator can see which particular command hanged or took unusual amount of time. Footnote: This is really cool feature which makes rhel6 debugging much more easier.	Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2015-07-22 07:18:47 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Harald Hoyer 2014-11-27 14:32:13 UTC

Hi Lukáš,

can you add more output to rc.sysinit. Especially after start_udev there are:

- dmsetup
- dmraid
- mdadm

calls, which do not have any "Starting" - "[OK]" messages. This often confuses admins, and udev gets the bug report, especially if the kernel clutters the console with output from all the devices.

Thanks!

Comment 1 Harald Hoyer 2014-11-27 14:38:13 UTC

You even might consider adding a kernel command line switch to activate "set -x" in rc.sysinit. That would help with debugging booting issues.

Comment 3 Lukáš Nykrýn 2014-12-01 09:35:22 UTC

(In reply to Harald Hoyer from comment #1)
> You even might consider adding a kernel command line switch to activate "set
> -x" in rc.sysinit. That would help with debugging booting issues.

Hmmm maybe we could use kernel "debug" option and log the output of all initscripts to kmsg :)

Ok, now seriously. Yes this is a good point and both of these things are easy to implement, so devel_ack+ fo 6.7.

Comment 4 Adam Thompson 2015-02-11 18:25:12 UTC

My $0.02... FWIW, I really wish there was a convenient way to log *all* the output of *all* initscripts.  Especially on remote systems where I don't have convenient access to the console, and doubly so when modesetting clears the scrollback buffer on the system so I can't see the last bits of output that typically didn't get logged anywhere.
So far, the only reliable solution I have is to use a serial console, and that's very difficult in many places.

Comment 5 Lukáš Nykrýn 2015-02-27 13:49:25 UTC

So I will go with this patch:
https://git.fedorahosted.org/cgit/initscripts.git/commit/?h=rhel6-branch&id=218e4d58ed0a1a8a5e6d75b178940a097444801d

You can now turn the debug output for everything that sources /etc/init.d/functions and the log output will go to kmsg.

I have chosen kmsg, because in early boot we can't write to any file (well maybe we could create a log file in /dev/shm), I don't like logging to stdout and with kmsg we will get a timestamp for free.

Comment 6 Lukáš Nykrýn 2015-02-27 14:21:20 UTC

And second part https://git.fedorahosted.org/cgit/initscripts.git/commit/?h=rhel6-branch&id=6b8e2996a8eb36aa70873f3d3e1728b57cdae571

Comment 9 errata-xmlrpc 2015-07-22 07:18:47 UTC

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-1380.html