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author | Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com> | 2016-09-21 15:51:11 +0300 |
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committer | Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com> | 2016-10-24 13:12:35 +0300 |
commit | 9d85025b0418163fae079c9ba8f8445212de8568 (patch) | |
tree | 4629e2dedf4a9ed45a6855c129101f9b52138372 /Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst | |
parent | 186128f75392f8478ad1b32a675627d738881ca4 (diff) | |
download | linux-9d85025b0418163fae079c9ba8f8445212de8568.tar.xz |
docs-rst: create an user's manual book
Place README, REPORTING-BUGS, SecurityBugs and kernel-parameters
on an user's manual book.
As we'll be numbering the user's manual, remove the manual
numbering from SecurityBugs.
Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst | 52 |
1 files changed, 52 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..e89d97f31eaf --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +Explaining the dreaded "No init found." boot hang message +========================================================= + +OK, so you've got this pretty unintuitive message (currently located +in init/main.c) and are wondering what the H*** went wrong. +Some high-level reasons for failure (listed roughly in order of execution) +to load the init binary are: + +A) Unable to mount root FS +B) init binary doesn't exist on rootfs +C) broken console device +D) binary exists but dependencies not available +E) binary cannot be loaded + +Detailed explanations: + +A) Set "debug" kernel parameter (in bootloader config file or CONFIG_CMDLINE) + to get more detailed kernel messages. +B) make sure you have the correct root FS type + (and ``root=`` kernel parameter points to the correct partition), + required drivers such as storage hardware (such as SCSI or USB!) + and filesystem (ext3, jffs2 etc.) are builtin (alternatively as modules, + to be pre-loaded by an initrd) +C) Possibly a conflict in ``console= setup`` --> initial console unavailable. + E.g. some serial consoles are unreliable due to serial IRQ issues (e.g. + missing interrupt-based configuration). + Try using a different ``console= device`` or e.g. ``netconsole=``. +D) e.g. required library dependencies of the init binary such as + ``/lib/ld-linux.so.2`` missing or broken. Use + ``readelf -d <INIT>|grep NEEDED`` to find out which libraries are required. +E) make sure the binary's architecture matches your hardware. + E.g. i386 vs. x86_64 mismatch, or trying to load x86 on ARM hardware. + In case you tried loading a non-binary file here (shell script?), + you should make sure that the script specifies an interpreter in its shebang + header line (``#!/...``) that is fully working (including its library + dependencies). And before tackling scripts, better first test a simple + non-script binary such as ``/bin/sh`` and confirm its successful execution. + To find out more, add code ``to init/main.c`` to display kernel_execve()s + return values. + +Please extend this explanation whenever you find new failure causes +(after all loading the init binary is a CRITICAL and hard transition step +which needs to be made as painless as possible), then submit patch to LKML. +Further TODOs: + +- Implement the various ``run_init_process()`` invocations via a struct array + which can then store the ``kernel_execve()`` result value and on failure + log it all by iterating over **all** results (very important usability fix). +- try to make the implementation itself more helpful in general, + e.g. by providing additional error messages at affected places. + +Andreas Mohr <andi at lisas period de> |