colin setup and fine tuning quest

[dkeg]

okay, so got Colin installed and working in it as we speak!

Had some hurdles, whether normal or not, not sure. I did add myself as a user and created my wanted directories, and with my bloat partition mounted, cp´d a bunch of stuff. Problem was everything was read only. so I chowned my user directory, and that seemed to fix it. Is that a normal process?

Second, and wierd issue, is I cannot run an installed plain vanilla kernel, which is the same kernel I run on my other partition. It scrolls though its boot text, blinks and dissappears to black screen. Right before it blanks, the text kind of gets distorted, shrinks height wise, stretches a bit in width. So far I have not found any leads to fix or at least figure out why.

Third, my wireless module was available, but I have to modprobe at every boot. I found it was blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/, so I commented that out, no luck. Still no luck adding brcmsmac to modules.conf or rc.local. Any suggestions? Its no problem to type 3 words to load, just more curious what I exactly need to do to have it automatically load. What am I missing.

Other than that, runs great. still in cwm, haven´t spent any time outside of getting the basics going and above questions. Great learning experience, even screwing up and chrooting from my bloat partition to fix. Fun fun.

thanks

edit-booting using systemd loads wireless module automatically. still investigating my curiosity.

edit 2- add scrot to show off colin

[machinebacon]

Hello Drew,

1) how did you create the new user?
2) The 'other kernel' is on another partition or in the same /boot partition like Colin?
3) Maybe related: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Br ... rcmsmac.29

[xaos52]

After [un]/blacklisting a module you better:
1. run sudo depmod
2. run update-initramfs
3. reboot
This is not necessary for all modules, but... better be safe than sorry

[dkeg]

Thanks guys.

1. creating new user

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useradd dkeg
passwd dkeg
adduser dkeg sudo

Logged in as dkeg, noticed permission issues, so from /home

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chown -R dkeg:users dkeg

2. Seperate partition - edit...when i remove the kernel, i get this

The link /vmlinuz is a damaged link
Removing symbolic link vmlinuz
you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]
The link /initrd.img is a damaged link
Removing symbolic link initrd.img
you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]

3. Trying now Got it!. I needed to un-blacklist bcma as well.

Thank you both vey much.

[machinebacon]

Drew,

1) check the last part of the First Step: http://www.linuxbbq.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=608

2) the damaged link is nothing serious, possible some .old-labeled leftover. So this has nothing to do with the problem. You can check the / for two files with an .old extension, remove them, and try a "sudo update-grub" again.

[wuxmedia]

ahh, useradd is pretty hardcore (for a pussy like me), adduser makes it a ton easier, as it adds the groups for you.

[machinebacon]

The problem about adduser is that not every Linux system uses it as command, it is more or less a Debian-ish frontend. Nothing wrong with it, it's something like update-alternatives, makes it easier for users, but then again hides stuff from them. There is always more than one way of doing things, IMO useradd is preferred because it can be used on all other Linux systems. AFAIR. And YMMV :D

[machinebacon]

Oh, Drew, one more thing: check if there is a ln -s created between the latest initrd.img / vmlinuz and these two files in the root directory.

[bones]

ahh, useradd is pretty hardcore (for a pussy like me), adduser makes it a ton easier, as it adds the groups for you.

It's not such a big deal, really. I use useradd instead of adduser when I setup my slack installations:

http://docs.slackware.com/slackbook:users

[dkeg]

MB, there were. Could there be an issue with how the sym links are gettting created? I´ve purged and reinstalled, update grub, and still same.

[machinebacon]

I don't know of issues. Usually the latest kernel is linked to the root folder.
So the vanilla kernel is on a separate partition (for example /dev/sda1/boot), and the BBQ kernel in /dev/sda2/boot)? Are these two different drives?
Have a try with 'sudo grubrepair', maybe it fixes it already.

[dkeg]

colin is on /dev/sda6. I am using the defacto 3.11 towo kernel which is fine. But for my machine the vanilla kernel seems to run better (cooler, and lighter). So I just did a get of the 3.10-3 vanilla kernel, update-grub, and all seems good. But when I reboot and select the vanilla, the above described happens, and not sure if I mentioned, but I have to hard poweroff, then power back on again. I did try the grubrepair but no luck.

Which log can I check b/c it seems dmesg is overwritten when I restart into the working kernel.

I'm still futzing with it.

my bloat is on /dev/sda5, and that is the partition that has the same kernel setup as my beloved colin, towo and vanilla, living together in harmony :D

[dkeg]

Please, sidetracks are good.

[machinebacon]

Is the init=/bin/systemd there in the GRUB boot line?

[dkeg]

yes.

[machinebacon]

thanks for moving the posts.

Well I have no other idea right now, so the other kernels boot, only the vanilla doesn't? What if you download the vanilla kernel in Colin?

[xaos52]

Give us some more info dkeg.
From where it all starts - the grub2 entries from /boot/grub/grub.cfg - to 'ls -al /' and 'ls -al /boot'
You can stop there for the moment.

[dkeg]

sure, didn't to confuse others. keep it clean.

you know, its just one of those things I'll keep working on. I still use colin now as my main. Its just that the vanilla kernel runs 25M lighter. Overall though, in the grand scheme it doesn't really matter, at really, at this point, its more a matter of a challenge to figure out the why.

maybe I'll take a video of what it looks like when I boot.

question, if I have to force power off to get out of failed boot, are there still logs I can view once I boot successfully into again?

the vanilla kernel does boot fine in bloat, its in colin it doesn't. The text scrolls real quick, but I see it definitely is snagging on something. Viewing a log would help

[machinebacon]

Okay, I have an idea - so first, to answer your question, you have to install rsyslog. Secondly, Bloat should be running systemd44 while Colin has systemd205 or so. What if you clean the 'init=/bin/systemd' part manually in the GRUB boot screen and boot with the 'old' sysvinit? It should boot slower, but eventually end up in tty1
(of course I mean the vanilla kernel)

Edit: one more thing, can you post the uname -a (or the apt-cache policy) of the vanilla kernel?

[dkeg]

grub.cfg

ls -al from /

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total 1380
drwxr-xr-x  20 root root     4096 Oct  1 08:42 .
drwxr-xr-x  20 root root     4096 Oct  1 08:42 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root     4096 Sep 26 22:03 bin
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root     4096 Oct  1 08:39 boot
-rw-------   1 root root  1904640 Sep 30 08:09 core.3296
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root     3180 Oct  1 09:36 dev
drwxr-xr-x 138 root root    12288 Oct  1 08:42 etc
drwxr-xr-x   4 dkeg users    4096 Sep 26 21:00 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root       31 Sep 29 22:06 initrd.img -> /boot/initrd.img-3.10-3-686-pae
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root     4096 Sep 26 22:02 lib
drwx------   2 root root    16384 Sep 27  2012 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root     4096 Aug 22 11:48 media
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root     4096 Sep 29 22:53 mnt
dr-xr-xr-x 109 root root        0 Oct  1 09:36 proc
drwx------   7 root root     4096 Oct  1 09:36 root
drwxr-xr-x  14 root root      360 Oct  1 09:39 run
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    12288 Sep 29 08:49 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root     4096 Sep 13  2012 srv
dr-xr-xr-x  13 root root        0 Oct  1 09:36 sys
drwxrwxrwt   7 root root     4096 Oct  1 10:25 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root     4096 Sep 26 20:54 usr
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root     4096 Sep 26 20:50 var
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root       27 Sep 29 22:06 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-3.10-3-686-pae

ls -al from /boot

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total 50884
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     4096 Oct  1 08:39 .
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root     4096 Oct  1 08:42 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   151102 Sep 11 06:55 config-3.10-3-686-pae
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   134419 Sep 27 09:04 config-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   134559 Sep 27 09:05 config-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686-pae
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Sep 29 22:07 extlinux
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root     4096 Sep 29 22:54 grub
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 12977886 Sep 29 22:07 initrd.img-3.10-3-686-pae
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 12491760 Sep 28 15:37 initrd.img-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 12562269 Sep 29 10:24 initrd.img-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686-pae
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  1850298 Sep 11 06:55 System.map-3.10-3-686-pae
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  1735254 Sep 27 09:04 System.map-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  1785800 Sep 27 09:05 System.map-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686-pae
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  2335680 Sep 11 06:54 vmlinuz-3.10-3-686-pae
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  2901872 Sep 27 09:04 vmlinuz-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  3011024 Sep 27 09:04 vmlinuz-3.11-2.towo-siduction-686-pae