Gentoo boot and logging.

[qfingers]

I would like to see gentoo update the system startup procedure. There are messages when the system boots of errors from various /etc/init.d/* and /sbin/rc that don't get logged.

The problem started when I emerged baselayout and somehow my /proc subdirectory got blown away. Every time I tried to reboot, my system would give a bunch of error messages about not being able to symlink files. I traced it down to not having /proc in the root. When I would go into single user mode for administration, I couldn't remount '/' because /proc wasn't there (though running mount said it was mounted on /proc). Many programs rely on /proc being mounted. So, when I tried to remount '/' as read/write, it was give me an error saying '/' was not mounted. After I fixed this problem, I rebooted the machine and got more error messages about device nodes in /dev missing. Since the console output was not logged, it's vary difficult to see which ones were missing and why. So, I figure I would look into /var/log files to see if any information is in there, but to no avail.

Continuing my quest to fix all the problems, I thought I would look at the boot procedure in /sbin/rc and the /etc/runlevels/boot/* scripts. Well, that lead me to looking in /etc/init.d/functions.sh which is where most of the problems exist. The logging is minimal, and most of the functions in /etc/init.d/functions.sh do "echo" to display results and information. The esyslog() and ewarn() functions do the only logging.

All that being said, I would like to see the entire boot procedure logged to a file. All the messages displayed to the console should be written to a file so they can be examined if there are problems. At least it should be a configurable option.

I still don't have a completely error free boot procedure. The networking code doesn't startup, it can't see to find the /dev/snd nodes. I want to get this fixed so my machine boots correctly, and it isn't easy without seeing a log of the boot procedure.

Is there a simple way to log the output of all messages?

[ebrostig]

Well, the boot process (i.e the boot of the Linux kernel) is logged. You can see the result of it with 'dmesg', but the rest of the init scripts are not logged. I agree that this would be a nice feature. Maybe you could file a bug on it and get it included in the next release?

When it comes to the /dev issues, as long as you are using the devfs and it is configured in the kernel, the devices that shows up under /dev is a reflection of what you have selected and configured of devices in your kernel configuration. So, if you are missing devices in /dev, they most likely are not configured into the kernel or the drivers for them are not loaded.

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

[qfingers]