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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2016-12-12 21:58:13 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2016-12-12 21:58:13 -0800
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treef63906f41699c8e38af9d12b063e2ceab0286ef2 /Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst
parentMerge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) (diff)
parentdma-buf: Extract dma-buf.rst (diff)
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Merge tag 'docs-4.10' of git://git.lwn.net/linux
Pull documentation update from Jonathan Corbet: "These are the documentation changes for 4.10. It's another busy cycle for the docs tree, as the sphinx conversion continues. Highlights include: - Further work on PDF output, which remains a bit of a pain but should be more solid now. - Five more DocBook template files converted to Sphinx. Only 27 to go... Lots of plain-text files have also been converted and integrated. - Images in binary formats have been replaced with more source-friendly versions. - Various bits of organizational work, including the renaming of various files discussed at the kernel summit. - New documentation for the device_link mechanism. ... and, of course, lots of typo fixes and small updates" * tag 'docs-4.10' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (193 commits) dma-buf: Extract dma-buf.rst Update Documentation/00-INDEX docs: 00-INDEX: document directories/files with no docs docs: 00-INDEX: remove non-existing entries docs: 00-INDEX: add missing entries for documentation files/dirs docs: 00-INDEX: consolidate process/ and admin-guide/ description scripts: add a script to check if Documentation/00-INDEX is sane Docs: change sh -> awk in REPORTING-BUGS Documentation/core-api/device_link: Add initial documentation core-api: remove an unexpected unident ppc/idle: Add documentation for powersave=off Doc: Correct typo, "Introdution" => "Introduction" Documentation/atomic_ops.txt: convert to ReST markup Documentation/local_ops.txt: convert to ReST markup Documentation/assoc_array.txt: convert to ReST markup docs-rst: parse-headers.pl: cleanup the documentation docs-rst: fix media cleandocs target docs-rst: media/Makefile: reorganize the rules docs-rst: media: build SVG from graphviz files docs-rst: replace bayer.png by a SVG image ...
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+Explaining the dreaded "No init found." boot hang message
+=========================================================
+
+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).
+ 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.
+
+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.
+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.
+
+Andreas Mohr <andi at lisas period de>