Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-27 Thread David Rosenstrauch

David C. Rankin wrote:

Weeks ago, I learned that kdm doesn't belong in the DAEMONS LINE and
moved it to inittab.


?  That's always worked fine for me.  (At least with both kdm3 and slim.)

Can you elaborate?  What's the issue?

DR


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-27 Thread Xavier
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 5:56 PM, David Rosenstrauchdar...@darose.net wrote:
 David C. Rankin wrote:

 Weeks ago, I learned that kdm doesn't belong in the DAEMONS LINE and
 moved it to inittab.

 ?  That's always worked fine for me.  (At least with both kdm3 and slim.)

 Can you elaborate?  What's the issue?

 DR


archwiki is your friend :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Adding_a_login_manager_%28KDM,_GDM,_or_XDM%29_to_automatically_boot_on_startup#Configure_loading_the_Display_Manager


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-27 Thread David Rosenstrauch

Xavier wrote:

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 5:56 PM, David Rosenstrauchdar...@darose.net wrote:

David C. Rankin wrote:

Weeks ago, I learned that kdm doesn't belong in the DAEMONS LINE and
moved it to inittab.

?  That's always worked fine for me.  (At least with both kdm3 and slim.)

Can you elaborate?  What's the issue?

DR



archwiki is your friend :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Adding_a_login_manager_%28KDM,_GDM,_or_XDM%29_to_automatically_boot_on_startup#Configure_loading_the_Display_Manager


The inittab method is recommended for various reasons, one being that 
it will allow you to boot directly into framebuffer mode from GRUB. This 
is an advantage should the graphics driver crash in X, for example, you 
would not be forced to fix your system from a live cd or through other 
needlessly complex means.


With the inittab method all you would have to do is to press 'e' for 
edit at the GRUB prompt and just add:


3

to the end of the 'kernel' line to boot directly into framebuffer mode 
in order to fix your system/X (This is also described more thoroughly  
descriptive below.)




Hmmm ... still not sure I get what the problem is.  Any time I've ever 
run into a situation where either X or the DM crashes, it leaves me at a 
console login prompt.  So I can just login to the console and fix things 
from there - no live CD needed.


Incorrect/misleading Wiki page, methinks ...

DR


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-27 Thread Damien Churchill
2009/7/27 David Rosenstrauch dar...@darose.net:


 With the inittab method all you would have to do is to press 'e' for edit at
 the GRUB prompt and just add:


Is that pretty much the same as adding single to the kernel line?
Least that's how I normally do it.


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-27 Thread Roman Kyrylych
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 19:07, David Rosenstrauchdar...@darose.net wrote:
 Xavier wrote:

 On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 5:56 PM, David Rosenstrauchdar...@darose.net
 wrote:

 David C. Rankin wrote:

 Weeks ago, I learned that kdm doesn't belong in the DAEMONS LINE and
 moved it to inittab.

 ?  That's always worked fine for me.  (At least with both kdm3 and slim.)

 Can you elaborate?  What's the issue?

 DR


 archwiki is your friend :

 http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Adding_a_login_manager_%28KDM,_GDM,_or_XDM%29_to_automatically_boot_on_startup#Configure_loading_the_Display_Manager

 The inittab method is recommended for various reasons, one being that it
 will allow you to boot directly into framebuffer mode from GRUB. This is an
 advantage should the graphics driver crash in X, for example, you would not
 be forced to fix your system from a live cd or through other needlessly
 complex means.

 With the inittab method all you would have to do is to press 'e' for edit at
 the GRUB prompt and just add:

 3

 to the end of the 'kernel' line to boot directly into framebuffer mode in
 order to fix your system/X (This is also described more thoroughly 
 descriptive below.)



 Hmmm ... still not sure I get what the problem is.  Any time I've ever run
 into a situation where either X or the DM crashes, it leaves me at a console
 login prompt.  So I can just login to the console and fix things from there
 - no live CD needed.

 Incorrect/misleading Wiki page, methinks ...

Yep, the wiki gives wrong reasoning.

The only advantage of inittab over DAEMONS may be
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Start_X_at_boot#Starting_X_as_preferred_user_without_logging_in
but some login managers allow automatic login as well (at least GDM does).

-- 
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)


[arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-25 Thread David C. Rankin
Listmates,

Seems like a simple question, but I've searched /var/log and can't find 
a file that contains the boot history showing all the fail messages during 
boot. For some reason after the latest update, my i686 box showed a half dozen 
or so fail messages. I need to find the log of what died.

The upside to this? This was my i686 box that would no longer start kde 
after the next-previous set of updates. Now kde4 starts fine again.

Whatever failed can't be that critical because the box is functioning 
fine, but I still want to find out what failed. If the file is in /var/log, 
then I just flat missed it. I thought it would be daemons.log, but I found no 
fail messages.


-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-25 Thread Dan McGee
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 4:49 PM, David C.
Rankindrankina...@suddenlinkmail.com wrote:
 Listmates,

        Seems like a simple question, but I've searched /var/log and can't 
 find a file that contains the boot history showing all the fail messages 
 during boot. For some reason after the latest update, my i686 box showed a 
 half dozen or so fail messages. I need to find the log of what died.

        The upside to this? This was my i686 box that would no longer start 
 kde after the next-previous set of updates. Now kde4 starts fine again.

        Whatever failed can't be that critical because the box is functioning 
 fine, but I still want to find out what failed. If the file is in /var/log, 
 then I just flat missed it. I thought it would be daemons.log, but I found no 
 fail messages.

This might not actually be logged anywhere now that I think about it.
To devs- am I wrong, or maybe we should add some syslog foo in here so
this stuff is more easily traceable?

I personally disable the VC on tty1 in inittab on all machines so that
no console overwrites the boot screen.

-Dan


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-25 Thread Randy Morris
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 05:29:31PM -0500, Dan McGee wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 4:49 PM, David C.
 Rankindrankina...@suddenlinkmail.com wrote:
  Listmates,
 
         Seems like a simple question, but I've searched /var/log and
  can't find a file that contains the boot history showing all the
  fail messages during boot. For some reason after the latest
  update, my i686 box showed a half dozen or so fail messages. I
  need to find the log of what died.
 
         The upside to this? This was my i686 box that would no longer
  start kde after the next-previous set of updates. Now kde4 starts
  fine again.
 
         Whatever failed can't be that critical because the box is
  functioning fine, but I still want to find out what failed. If the
  file is in /var/log, then I just flat missed it. I thought it would
  be daemons.log, but I found no fail messages.
 
 This might not actually be logged anywhere now that I think about it.
 To devs- am I wrong, or maybe we should add some syslog foo in here so
 this stuff is more easily traceable?
 
 I personally disable the VC on tty1 in inittab on all machines so that
 no console overwrites the boot screen.
 
 -Dan

That's an interesting way to handle that Dan.  Personally if I'm
troubleshooting this, I add something like read KEY to the end of
/etc/rc.local so that the boot pauses for a keypress.  After I see what
I want, I just comment out or remove that line from /etc/rc.local.

Another way would be to remove the string escape that clears the screen
from /etc/issue, but IMHO that is quite ugly.


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-25 Thread Dwight Schauer
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Randy Morrisrandy.mor...@archlinux.us wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 05:29:31PM -0500, Dan McGee wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 4:49 PM, David C.
 Rankindrankina...@suddenlinkmail.com wrote:
  Listmates,
 
         Seems like a simple question, but I've searched /var/log and
  can't find a file that contains the boot history showing all the
  fail messages during boot. For some reason after the latest
  update, my i686 box showed a half dozen or so fail messages. I
  need to find the log of what died.
 
         The upside to this? This was my i686 box that would no longer
  start kde after the next-previous set of updates. Now kde4 starts
  fine again.
 
         Whatever failed can't be that critical because the box is
  functioning fine, but I still want to find out what failed. If the
  file is in /var/log, then I just flat missed it. I thought it would
  be daemons.log, but I found no fail messages.

 This might not actually be logged anywhere now that I think about it.
 To devs- am I wrong, or maybe we should add some syslog foo in here so
 this stuff is more easily traceable?

 I personally disable the VC on tty1 in inittab on all machines so that
 no console overwrites the boot screen.

 -Dan

 That's an interesting way to handle that Dan.  Personally if I'm
 troubleshooting this, I add something like read KEY to the end of
 /etc/rc.local so that the boot pauses for a keypress.  After I see what
 I want, I just comment out or remove that line from /etc/rc.local.

 Another way would be to remove the string escape that clears the screen
 from /etc/issue, but IMHO that is quite ugly.


I disable vc/1 on all my machines in inittab as well, and have been
doing for over a year now on all my arch installs. It is one of the
first things I do after installing, and I just leave it disabled.


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-25 Thread Aaron Griffin
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Dan McGeedpmc...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 4:49 PM, David C.
 Rankindrankina...@suddenlinkmail.com wrote:
 Listmates,

        Seems like a simple question, but I've searched /var/log and can't 
 find a file that contains the boot history showing all the fail messages 
 during boot. For some reason after the latest update, my i686 box showed a 
 half dozen or so fail messages. I need to find the log of what died.

        The upside to this? This was my i686 box that would no longer start 
 kde after the next-previous set of updates. Now kde4 starts fine again.

        Whatever failed can't be that critical because the box is functioning 
 fine, but I still want to find out what failed. If the file is in /var/log, 
 then I just flat missed it. I thought it would be daemons.log, but I found 
 no fail messages.

 This might not actually be logged anywhere now that I think about it.
 To devs- am I wrong, or maybe we should add some syslog foo in here so
 this stuff is more easily traceable?

 I personally disable the VC on tty1 in inittab on all machines so that
 no console overwrites the boot screen.

Nope, not logged anywhere. Those messages, however, are arch messages.
The daemon itself that fails should write its output somewhere.

If you just want a list of what isn't running, you can always look
in... hmm whatever the dir is... /var/run/daemons I think, and compare
that to rc.conf.

syslogging this is acceptable if someone wants to supply a patch


Re: [arch-general] Where can I find the boot log to find out what failed on boot?

2009-07-25 Thread David C. Rankin
On Saturday 25 July 2009 08:33:01 pm Aaron Griffin wrote:
 On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Dan McGeedpmc...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 4:49 PM, David C.
  Rankindrankina...@suddenlinkmail.com wrote:
  Listmates,
 
 Seems like a simple question, but I've searched /var/log and can't 
  find a file that contains the boot history showing all the fail messages 
  during boot. For some reason after the latest update, my i686 box showed a 
  half dozen or so fail messages. I need to find the log of what died.
 
 The upside to this? This was my i686 box that would no longer start 
  kde after the next-previous set of updates. Now kde4 starts fine again.
 
 Whatever failed can't be that critical because the box is 
  functioning fine, but I still want to find out what failed. If the file is 
  in /var/log, then I just flat missed it. I thought it would be 
  daemons.log, but I found no fail messages.
 
  This might not actually be logged anywhere now that I think about it.
  To devs- am I wrong, or maybe we should add some syslog foo in here so
  this stuff is more easily traceable?
 
  I personally disable the VC on tty1 in inittab on all machines so that
  no console overwrites the boot screen.
 
 Nope, not logged anywhere. Those messages, however, are arch messages.
 The daemon itself that fails should write its output somewhere.
 
 If you just want a list of what isn't running, you can always look
 in... hmm whatever the dir is... /var/run/daemons I think, and compare
 that to rc.conf.
 
 syslogging this is acceptable if someone wants to supply a patch
 

Thanks all,

I found it. For some reason kdm was crapping out. Really strange. Weeks 
ago, I learned that kdm doesn't belong in the DAEMONS LINE and moved it to 
inittab. Then for some reason something changed with the 7/22 updates that 
caused X to respawn too fast. After the last update, the failed messages were 
from kdm.

After working on it a bit more, I finally arrived at:

x:5:respawn:/opt/kde/bin/kdm -nodaemon

and all seems to be working well now. I need to use kdm for kde3 so I 
maintain my kdemod3 login capability from the greeter. So far so good with this 
setup. Anybody else have a better way?


-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com