Subject: Re: bug#19248: installation of 0.8 stops at guile prompt.

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 21:15:19 +0100

th3kent <[email-masked]> skribis:

> [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>> kennedy <[email-masked]> skribis:
>>> i deleted the lines for "initrd" and the installation completed
>>> successfully on first attempt.
>>
>> So you booted on the USB disk and re-run ‘guix system init’, is that
>> correct?
>>
>> Did you reformat the root partition before doing that?
>
> yes, i booted off my u.s.b disk, reformatted my root partition, and
> re-installed.
>
>>> however, the reboot after installation results in a kernel panic.  the
>>> messages just before the panic are the following,
>>>
>>> groupadd: cannot lock /etc/group; try again later
>>
>> Could you try removing the /etc/.pwd.lock file on that partition?  (You
>> can do that on a system booted from the USB stick, and then reboot in
>> the installed system.)
>
> i removed /etc/.pwd.lock, as well as /etc/group.lock, and the reboot
> tries to enter the guile prompt ("Entering new prompt ...") and i get a
> kernel panic.

But do you actually get the Guile prompt?

If you did and were brave enough, we could coordinate on IRC to try and
investigate, for instance to check whether / is writable, things like
that.

> just f.y.i,  i can't use shift-page.up to scrollback through the boot
> messages.

I’m running out of ideas, sorry.

If that is an option for you, could you try starting anew?  That is,
boot on the USB image, erase the target partition with “mkfs.ext4
/dev/xyzN”, and proceed with installation.  We must have missed
something, but I don’t see what.

Thanks,
Ludo’.