Bug 837911

Summary: initramfs won't find encrypted rootfs or usb keyboard won't work at password prompt for rootfs
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Bruno Wolff III <bruno>
Component: dracutAssignee: dracut-maint
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: rawhideCC: bruno, dracut-maint, harald, jonathan, robatino
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2012-07-09 13:03:45 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 752654    
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Description Flags
Log file from failed boot none

Description Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-05 19:42:22 UTC 
Description of problem:
I yum upgraded a system from f17 to f18 Monday (finishing on Tuesday) and I cannot get it to boot with an initramfs made after the upgrade. I can boot with the one left behind from f17. I have another rawhide machine that does work, but the last time I ran dracut was on the weekend. I have been trying to revert dracut and systemd but with the changes going on recently I haven't been able to get a workable consistent set up packages from last week. The machine with the problem is an x86_64 machine and the one where it is working is i686 and does not use a USB keyboard, so in theory this could be a hardware specific issue.

I'm planning on trying to build a new initramfs on the machine where things are currently working to see if that breaks things. Trying to isolate the problem is further complicated by a systemd plymouth bug where booting with encrypted home fails and things need to manually get fixed up after waiting for time outs.

I also haven't seen consistent failure. Sometimes the boot will fail before switching video modes indicating that the file system specified in grub wasn't in /dev/mapper. Other times I get to the password prompt, but typing in the password does not result in asterisks being displayed nor the boot continuing.

The root file system is ext4 on luks on software raid.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
dracut-020-22.git20120702.fc18.x86_64
systemd-186-1.fc18.x86_64
kernel-3.5.0-0.rc5.git2.1.fc18.x86_64
Comment 1 Harald Hoyer 2012-07-06 08:08:30 UTC 
please boot with "rd.debug" and if you get dropped to a shell:

- mount any partition/usb stick
- run: # journalctl -a --no-pager > /mnt/<usb stick>/log.txt

and attach log.txt
Comment 2 Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-07 15:49:53 UTC 
I tried to look at doing this, but another bug in systemd has been created preventing me from doing this. I might have a dump that shows you this bug, but it may be stopping too soon now. Also it is hard to get data off the system.
The x86_64 system is really hosed as the root fs got trashed while I was trying to get past the latest bug. I do think the same issue is happening on my i686 system, but I want to be more careful trying to recover. If I manage to get the saved data off I'll add what I got.
Comment 3 Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-07 16:18:33 UTC 
Created attachment 596777 [details]
Log file from failed boot

I was able to get the logfile, but I am not sure if things got far enough to show the problem in this bug, before systemd got messed up.
Comment 4 Harald Hoyer 2012-07-09 06:43:11 UTC 
does it work with selinux in permissive mode (add "enforcing=0" to the kernel command line)?
Comment 5 Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-09 11:38:29 UTC 
Well it doesn't seem to make a difference, but I think I hit bug 838230 and this may be hiding this bug.
Comment 6 Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-09 11:56:35 UTC 
It looks like I need to clean up from installing dracut-020-51 first. Once I get that done, I'll see if things get better. I also see there is a new dracut today to try out.
Comment 7 Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-09 13:03:45 UTC 
This appears to be fixed with dracut-020-57.git20120709.fc18.
Comment 8 Bruno Wolff III 2012-07-10 00:00:39 UTC 
Just as a followup, the unable to find an encrypted root partition issue is fixed. There still seems to be some usb related issues early in the boot, but I am seeing different behaviors for different kernels, so I need to look into it some more and will file a bug later. (Though maybe not against dracut.)