USB devices not being recognized when booting from Slackware USB flash drive

thethinker · 05-29-2018, 08:17 PM

If I install updates on my Slackware system which require a reconfigure of lilo, typically my boot breaks. This has something to do with the fact that the boot install is on a different hard drive then my OS. But anyway, my fix is to simply boot from the slackware USB boot flash drive I created during the original installation. Running liloconfig from there usually fixes things.

This time, when I did updates (via slackpkg), I got the usual lilo-type errors, booted into my flash drive, but lost keyboard and mouse support. Basically what happens:

* Get the flash drive menu, with the "boot:" option. Hit return (lights on keyboard and mouse, and typing is recognized)

* Do some basic "vmlinuz....." type kernel loading...everything seems fine.

* As soon as the screen refreshes for the rest of the boot process, the lights on the keyboard and mouse go off.

* I get to a login screen, and there is no recognition of my keyboard or mouse.

I've tried passing a few things to the kernel at boot time, like "console=/dev/tty0" and "iommu=soft", but these are just guesses. I've now disconnected all the USB devices but the mouse, keyboard, and flash drive. In addition, live CDs work fine (of Slacklive and also Xubuntu).

Any thoughts or debug approaches?

slac-in-the-box · 05-29-2018, 10:08 PM

Sounds like it can't find drivers for keyboard or mouse... possible causes could be that you upgraded a kernel without upgrading the kernel modules... the vmlinuz is a symbolic link to whatever kernel you point it at... if it's pointed at "huge" all the modules should be there; if it's pointed at "generic" then you'd probably want to create an initial ramdisk. it's still usually recommended to not use slackpkg for upgrading a kernel... have to blacklist the kernel packages... here's what the blacklist file in /etc/slackpkg says:

Quote:

#
# Automated upgrade of kernel packages aren't a good idea (and you need to
# run "lilo" after upgrade). If you think the same, uncomment the lines
# below
#
#kernel-firmware
#kernel-generic
#kernel-generic-smp
#kernel-headers
#kernel-huge
#kernel-huge-smp
#kernel-modules
#kernel-modules-smp
#kernel-source

It's not the end of the world though! One can boot off of slackware install media, such as usb thumbdrive, create a mount point and mount the target file system, chroot into that file system, and either create the missing initrd, or make sure vmlinuz points to the "huge" kernel...

thethinker · 05-30-2018, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box

It's not the end of the world though! One can boot off of slackware install media, such as usb thumbdrive, create a mount point and mount the target file system, chroot into that file system, and either create the missing initrd, or make sure vmlinuz points to the "huge" kernel...

Ok so here is how I attempted to implement that suggestion (sorry for my noobly-ness, just never had to do this precise thing). I booted into the slack DVD, then did

Code:

mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Then removed the existing vmlinuz and replaced it with a link to vmlinuz-huge.

End result, no difference in behavior. When I try to boot right in (from existing lilo install, which probably has mismatched headers as you clearly articulated), I get a kernel hang ("Booting Slack....." message that never gets any further). When I try to boot from my USB drive, I get to the login screen but again, no support for either keyboard or mouse.

I guess I could do a complete reinstall, which is not the end of the world but I kinda thought I had this system pretty well set up, so that would be disappointing.

Any more suggestions, before I do that?

slac-in-the-box · 06-04-2018, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Then removed the existing vmlinuz and replaced it with a link to vmlinuz-huge.

End result, no difference in behavior.

I don't know if you already re-installed, but I suspect, all that was needed was re-running lilo after you replaced vmlinuz with link to vmlinuz-huge. Perhaps lilo updates the MBR with the image indicated by the link; and though you changed the link, without running lilo, the mbr didn't get updated... If the old kernel is still there, you could also link to old kernel, re-run lilo... If you had to reinstall, well, hopefully you have a backup of crucial files... I keep my home on it's own partition, so If I need to wipe OS and re-install personal files are untouched...

bagrossi · 06-14-2018, 08:16 PM

Maybe adding a few modules into your initrd.gz might help, try to run /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh with the root changed to the PC (not in the usb drive), it will idenify your usb modules, then you run the output of this command which will generate a new /boot/initrd.gz