Re: Debugging failing shepherd startup

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi maya,

maya@zenmaya.xyz skribis:

> I have an issue with my Guix configuration. From a certain update my
> system fails to boot. It successfully boots into kernel and starts
> shepherd. But after that shepherd fails to activate some necessary
> service and the system is softlocked.
>
> The problem is that I can't neither control the system in the booted
> state at that point nor I can check the logs, as logd wasn't started
> yet, so kernel messages are only preserved in memory and on the screen.
>
> But I cannot scroll the screen, and can't interact with the system in
> any way. I can at least display some of them with disabling silent
> kernel, but the issue is the root cause is scrolled away too fast to be
> read.
>
> My question is, is there a way to debug this? I mostly need help with
> identifying the failing service, once I have it, I think I can sort it
> out.

Last month, Shepherd integration in Guix was fixed so that failure to
load one service would not prevent the system from loading and starting
other services:

  https://issues.guix.gnu.org/71144

Does the problem still manifest on a system reconfigured from a commit
after cca25a67693bb68a1884a081b415a43fad1e8641?

(See also <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/71193> for a recent example in
that vein and how the change above addresses it.)

HTH,
Ludo’.