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# Boot Debugging

From ArchWiki

The kernel provides for a convenient way to configure all sorts of advanced settings to enable you to quickly and conveniently boot into your existing system with varying levels of debugging output extended kernel parameters. It is very easy and useful to create several levels of debugging just by adding additional entries to your bootloader configuration. And if you ever have issues or problems down the road due to a power-failure or hardware failure, it can save you hours of trouble, and of course nothing can beat debugging output when it comes to learning about your system.

First, see the Kernel parameters article for method to add a kernel parameter for different boot loaders.

## Debug levels

### Light Debug

A quick way to see more verbose messages on your console is to boot up your bootloader entry after appending `verbose` to the kernel line.

### Medium Debug

Adding the `debug` kernel parameter to your kernel line is recognized by a lot of linux internals and enables quite a bit of debugging compared to the default.

### Heavy Debug

An even more impressive kernel parameter is the `ignore_loglevel`, which causes the system to ignore any loglevel and keeps the internal loglevel at the maximum debugging level, basically rendering dmesg unable to lower the debug level.

### Extreme Debug

If the "Heavy Debug" seemed like a lot of output, that's about 1/2 of the logging that occurs with kernel parameters:

    debug ignore_loglevel log_buf_len=10M print_fatal_signals=1 LOGLEVEL=8 earlyprintk=vga,keep sched_debug

This does a couple things:

- it uses the `earlyprintk` parameter to setup your kernel for "early" "printing" of messages to your "vga" screen.
- The `keep` just lets it stay on the screen longer. This will let you see logs that normally are hidden due to the boot-up process.
- `log_buf_len=10M` changes the log buffer length to 10MB
- Instructs that any fatal signals be printed with `print_fatal_signals`
- The last one, sched_debug, you can look up in the very excellent kernel documentation on kernel parameters.

### Insane Debug

The first few debugging kernel parameters turn on really verbose debugging. This kind of debugging is absolutely critical if you want to max out your system or just learn more about what is going on behind the scenes. But there is a final trick that is my favorite, it is the ability to set both environment variables, and more importantly, module parameters at boot.

As an example, here is some truly insane debugging kernel parameters. Note that the actual grub entry is all on one line. This turns on many devices to be at the absolute max debug level. The machine maybe slower than a TI-89 calculator (See Improve Boot Performance).

    rootwait ignore_loglevel debug debug_locks_verbose=1 sched_debug initcall_debug
    mminit_loglevel=4 udev.log_priority=8 loglevel=8 earlyprintk=vga,keep log_buf_len=10M
    print_fatal_signals=1 apm.debug=Y i8042.debug=Y drm.debug=1 scsi_logging_level=1
    usbserial.debug=Y option.debug=Y pl2303.debug=Y firewire_ohci.debug=1 hid.debug=1
    pci_hotplug.debug=Y pci_hotplug.debug_acpi=Y shpchp.shpchp_debug=Y apic=debug
    show_lapic=all hpet=verbose lmb=debug pause_on_oops=5 panic=10 sysrq_always_enabled

A couple key items are sysrq_always_enabled which forces on the sysrq magic, which really is a lifesaver when debugging at this level as your machine will freeze/stop-responding sometimes and it is nice to use sysrq to kill all tasks, change the loglevel, unmount all filesystems, or do a hard reboot. Another key parameter is the initcall_debug, which debugs the init process in excruciating detail. Very useful at times. The last parametery I find very useful is the udev.log_priority=8 to turn on udev logging.

## Debug methods

### Module Parameters

In Kernel modules#Parameters you can find a nice bash function to be run as root that will show a list of all the loaded modules and all of their parameters, including the current value of the parameter.

### Break Into Init

For instance, If you add break=y to your kernel cmdline, init will pause early in the boot process (after loading modules) and launch an interactive sh shell which can be used for troubleshooting purposes. (Normal boot continues after logout.) This is very similar to the shell that shows up if your computer gets turned off before it is able to shutdown properly. But using this parameter lets you enter into this mode differently at will.

### Debugging init

This awesome parameter udev.log_priority=8 does the same thing as editing the file `/etc/udev/udev.conf` except it executes earlier, turning on debugging output for udev. If you want to know your hardware, that is the key parameter right there. Another trick is if you change the `/etc/udev/udev.conf` to be verbose, then you can make your initrd image include that file to turn on verbose udeb debugging by adding it to your `/etc/mkinitcpio.conf` like:

    FILES="/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf /etc/udev/udev.conf"

, which on arch is as easy as

    # mkinitcpio -p linux

Debugging udev is key because the initrd performs a root change at the end of its run to usually launch a program like /sbin/init as part of a chroot, and unless the new file system has a valid /dev directory, udev must be initialized before invoking chroot in order to provide `/dev/console`.

    exec chroot . /sbin/init <dev/console >dev/console 2>&1

So basically, you are not able to view the logs that are generated before /dev/console is initialized by udev or by a special initrd you compiled yourself. One method the kernel developers use to be able to still get the log messages generated before /dev/console is available is to provide an alternative console that you can enable or disable from grub.

### Net Console

If you read through the kernel documentation regarding debugging, you will hear about Netconsole, which can be compiled into your kernel or loaded at runtime as a module. Having a netconsole entry in your kernel parameters is most excellent for debugging slower computers like old laptops or thin-clients. It is easy to use:

1. Just setup a 2nd computer (running arch) to accept syslog requests on a remote port, very fast and quick to do on arch-linux, 1 line to syslog.conf.
2. Then you could use a log-color-parser like ccze to view all syslog logs, or just tail your everything.log.
3. On your laptop, boot up and add `netconsole=514@10.0.0.2/12:34:56:78:9a:bc debug ignore_loglevel` into kernel parameters.
4. You will start seeing as much logging as you want on your syslog system. This logging lets you view even earlier log output than is available with the `earlyprintk=vga` kernel parameter, as netconsole is used by kernel hackers and developers, so it is very powerful.

### Hijacking cmdline

If you do not have access to GRUB or the kernel boottime cmdline, like on a server or virtual machine, as long as you have root permissions you can still enable this kind of simplistic verbose logging using a neat hack. While you cannot modify the `/proc/cmdline` even as root, you can place your own cmdline file on top of /proc/cmdline, so that accessing /proc/cmdline actually accesses your file.

For example if I cat /proc/cmdline, I have the following:

    root=/dev/disk/by-label/ROOT ro console=tty1 logo.nologo quiet

So I use a simple sed command to replace quiet with verbose like:

    sed 's/ quiet/ verbose/' /proc/cmdline > /root/cmdline

Then I bind mount /root/cmdline so that it becomes /proc/cmdline, using the -n option to mount so that this mount will not be recorded in the systems mtab.

    mount -n --bind -o ro /root/cmdline /proc/cmdline

Now if I cat /proc/cmdline, I have the following:

    root=/dev/disk/by-label/ROOT ro console=tty1 logo.nologo verbose

## Troubleshooting

### Repairing with Arch live-cd

In case grub is unable to boot your kernel, or if your initramfs is broken, you can boot into a safe system using an Arch live-cd. Once finished with repairs, unmount the broken system and reboot.

#### Mounting and Chrooting broken system

Once booted and at a console prompt, use the following to mount and repair your broken system (where `/dev/sda3` is `/` and `/dev/sda1` is `/boot`):

First create the mount-point and mount your root `/` filesystem to it, then cd into it.

    # mkdir /mnt/arch
    # mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/arch
    # cd /mnt/arch

Now create the proc, sysfs, and dev filesystems

    # mount -t proc proc proc/
    # mount -t sysfs sys sys/
    # mount -o bind /dev dev/

Next mount the boot partition if you use one.

    # mount /dev/sda1 boot/

Finally chroot into `/mnt/arch` which will become `/`.

    # chroot .

Turn on networking

#### Reinstalling with Pacman

The author uses pacman in a chrooted broken system to reinstall the kernel, grub, initramfs, udev, and any other packages that may be broken and/or needed to get the system up and running.

This will reinstall the kernel and initramfs so check that `/etc/mkinitcpio.conf` is correct or remove the file entirely and re-install mkinitcpio.

    # pacman -Syyu mkinitcpio linux udev

Afterwards, unmount and reboot.

## See Also

- Netconsole
- Syslinux
- GRUB2
- GRUB Legacy
- Kernel modules
- mkinitcpio
- Fstab
- Kernel Mode Setting
- LILO
- GUID Partition Table
- Systemd

## External Links

- Memtest
- List of Tools for UBCD - Can be added to custom menu.lst like memtest
- Official GRUB2 Manual - https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
- Ubuntu wiki page for GRUB2 - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
- GRUB2 wiki page describing steps to compile for UEFI systems - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting
- Wikipedia's page on BIOS Boot partition
- QA/Sysrq - Using sysrq
- Systemd Docs: Debug Logging to a Serial Console
- How to Isolate Linux ACPI Issues

Retrieved from "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Boot_Debugging&oldid=262368"
Categories:

- Boot process
- System recovery

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