System boots but only accessible from GRUB2 disk or LAN
 

Hardware GA-X79-UD3/ i3 /two GPU680

On upgrading from Debian8 RAID1 to Debian9 RAID1 (apt) the username/pass window was obtained but I typed

# systemctl set-default multi-user.target

and commented out the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="1.nvidia_NVreg_EnablePCIeGen3=1 quiet"

in /etc/default/grub, which was always successful to boot at the linux prompt for multiusers. Not this time, the system boots after two warnings

--- Failed to connect tp lvmetad

--- EDAC sbridge ECC is disabled with error -19

The second warning is irrelevant as there are no ECC memories. The first one is also marginal I believe.

The problem is that afterwards, the username/pass appears as a flash (I was unable to stop at it with Ctrl-S) followed by device scanning, at no end.

However, the system is accessible with either Super Grub2 disk of from the LAN, from my vintage VAIO running Debian9. Everything appears to be in order, RAID1 included. The two GTX680 (used for number crunching) appear to be OK from nvidia-smi commands.

I tried various solutions at no avail. Probably irrelevant to report here. I can only mention

--- changing to "use_lvmetad=0" in /etc/lvm had no effect.

--- running "systemctl enable lvm2-lvmetad.service" had no effect.

--- Ctrl+Alt+F2 does not bring the username/pass request.

---root@.....:/home/francesco# grep -E 'WW|EE' /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[ 56.025] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist.
[ 56.070] (WW) Hotplugging is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or 'vmmouse' will be disabled.
[ 56.070] (WW) Disabling Keyboard0
[ 56.070] (WW) Disabling Mouse0

Hope that users skilled in system analysis (which I am not, as a biochemist) can suggest how to avoid reinstalling the system.

Thanks

chiendarret

I have progressed to the point that it suffices starting the server from another computer on LAN, then the server performs perfectly, also in running molecular dynamics on a recent cuda driver 375.39 on both GPUs combined (which is a very strict test). I could use the server this way for my scientific work but it would be unaesthetic at the best.

I had to set "allowed_users=anybody" in /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config in order to start the X server as user from another computer on LAN. This is quite anomalous, as "allowed_users=console" is the norm. This indicates that the user has no command of the console, which should suggest what to do to restore normal conditions. I have tried various solutions at no avail.

chiendarret

When you boot up and get to the grub menu, press "e". Add "quiet" to the end of the "kernel" line. When you get into the system, make that change permanent.

Already done as soon as these problems arose, a few days ago. It did not solve the problem. As I had to modify the Xwrap to "everybody" from default "console", I believe that a problem is the ownership of the console. There are examples from RPM based systems */etc/pam.d/xserver), I found none for DEB-based systems, where xserver is elsewhere. At any event, everything is complicated by that evil "disk scanning", no example of which was found on the web. I posted now also on amd64 web, there must be an expert of DEB-based systems there. chiendarret

NEW:I have finally obtained a red-labeled line on booting, telling "Failed to load console system Reboot Logging"

This implies that it is not merely a problem of console ownership.

A rapid web survey failed to provide indications as to having the console loaded during booting on Debian amd64 stretch.

SOLVED System boots but only accessible fro Grub2 disk or LAV
 

As I received no useful hints on this forum, I managed by myself to fix successfully the problem on the basis of my previous last post chiendarret