Re: Debugging failing shepherd startup

[Felix Lechner via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org>]

Hi Maya,

On Fri, Jun 21 2024, maya@zenmaya.xyz wrote:

> 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.

I have had the same problem repeatedly one one piece of equipment.  It
is vexing to the n-th degree.

> 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.

I disable all suspect services and then add them back with an ad-hoc
geometric algorithm: I add half and, if those works, add a quarter, and
then an eighth...

There is some disagreement one how the Shepherd can produce better
logging output.  Some information may be in /var/log/messages but it can
be hard to find.

You are not alone.  Please post a reproducer if you have one.

Kind regards
Felix