Comment 65 for bug 98955

On Monday 27 April 2009, Charles Atkinson wrote:
> In bootlogd.c, there is a while loop starting at line 585 and ending at
> line 664.  Each iteration it reads from the intercepted console output,
> writes what it gets to the console and either buffers it or writes it to
> logfile.  What is the access() function on line 643?  Lines 648 and 651
> try to open logfile in append mode, creating it if it does not exist.
> As I understand it this should fail until there is a writeable /var/log
> directory.  If that is correct then it should work ... ?
>

I think it should work as you expect (but I never tried this kind of configuration).

Are you sure that it is non-writable /var that breaks it? For example, can you mount
root (with /var) read-write from the very beginning and see if this works?

Keep in mind that one of my patches changed the name of the log file,
it is /var/log/boot, not /var/log/bootmsg. Make sure this file exists or
call bootlogd with the -c option.

What is the status of bootlogd at the end of the boot sequence? Is it alive?
If yes, can you check what it is doing? What files it has opened (see /proc/*/fd)?

Does it work if started later? If yes, I suggest you bisect it and find the exact point
after which it starts working. It might be mounting of /dev, for example.