Commit 7dbffd3f authored by Cristian Souza's avatar Cristian Souza Committed by Jonathan Corbet

docs: admin-guide: Clarify sentences

Changes to make the text more formal and organized. The reasons are now cited and described at the same time.
Minor grammatical problems have also been fixed.
Signed-off-by: default avatarCristian Souza <cristianmsbr@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200411010201.GA22706@darkstarSigned-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
parent d8e8ff1f
Explaining the dreaded "No init found." boot hang message
Explaining the "No working init found." boot hang message
=========================================================
:Authors: Andreas Mohr <andi at lisas period de>
Cristian Souza <cristianmsbr at gmail period com>
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).
This document provides some high-level reasons for failure
(listed roughly in order of execution) to load the init binary.
1) **Unable to mount root FS**: Set "debug" kernel parameter (in bootloader
config file or CONFIG_CMDLINE) to get more detailed kernel messages.
2) **init binary doesn't exist on rootfs**: 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).
3) **Broken console device**: 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.
4) **Binary exists but dependencies not available**: 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.
5) **Binary cannot be loaded**: 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.
which needs to be made as painless as possible), then submit a 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.
- 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>
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