[systemd-devel] Too little information is shown when system enters emergency mode

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 04:58:46PM +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Sun, 21.10.12 15:59, Andrey Borzenkov (arvidjaar at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > Welcome to emergency mode. Use "systemctl default" or ^D to enter default mode.
> > Give root password for login:
> 
> systemd 195 will now also mention "journalctl -b" in this
> message. Originally this was only in the rescue mode, because of the
Thanks! I tweaked the message now a bit more to take into account
what sulogin says by itself.

> assumption that if you boot directly to emergency mode then no logs
> would be in the journal, and hence no point in recommending this
> command. However, after all most of the times people will end up in
> emergency mode is when file systems not showing up where journald *is*
> actually running and includes the desired, useful information.
> 
> > Started /boot/efi                                                      [  OK  ]
> > Dependency failed. Aborted start of /mnt                               [ ABORT]
> > Dependency failed. Aborted start of Login Service                      [ ABORT]
> > Dependency failed. Aborted start of D-Bus System Message Bus           [ ABORT]
> > Welcome to emergency mode. Use "systemctl default" or ^D to enter default mode.
> 
> Hmm, we definitely should show the initial unit that failed in this
> output. 
> 
> Can you restest with 195 please? If you find that there's information
> missing in "journalctl -b" or in the status output, then please file a
> bug, we really should place useful information at both.
It _is_ already better, the output is more complete and includes the
failing device, so that part is fine.

But there's one fundamental problem: the message suggests 'systemctl
default', but 'systemctl default' will fail again, unless the error
went away by itself, which is not going to happen in case of a missing
device. But it's a tough nut to crack.

Zbyszek