[Clfs-support] Cannot login on serial port (embedded ARM, busybox)

[Andrew Bradford]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Lance Jump <lancej29 at gmail.com> wrote:
> /dev/ttyS0 is the USB/serial console.  It is my only console connection to
> either u-boot or Linux and all of the output appears to go there.  It is
> also the "console=" in the Linux command line.  When I execute something
> (inittab) other than getty (e.g. ls) the output goes there.  When I do getty
> in inittab, it does put out a message saying that root logged in on
> /dev/ttyS0.  Is it still possible that this connection is actually not
> /dev/ttyS0?  How would I check and/or correct?  If it is not /dev/ttyS0,
> what might it be?

>> Can you provide the entire boot output including uboot output data?
>> http://pastebin.cross-lfs.org/
> Done.

For those not searching, direct link here:
http://pastebin.cross-lfs.org/230524

> I wanted to "lock down" a repeatable configuration with a specific
> distribution.  As I recall, LFS-Live was actually recommended in one of the
> CLFS books (maybe this one).  The chroot also allows me ensure that nothing
> "gets outside" the environment and to very easily "snapshot" places in the
> development or start over completely without having to worry about any
> lasting side effects on my main system.

Understandable.  The LFS live CD should work well for building but
I've not personally tried it.
If you follow the embedded book exactly for creating the user account
to build an embedded system, nothing will leak into your build from
the host.

How do you snapshot builds?  I'm curious as I've not found an easy way
that works well.

> The bootscripts appear to be in /etc/rc.d/init.d and related.  This agrees
> with inittab. The startup script does have code in it to perform the mounts,
> but it is looking like it never executes.  I have echo messages in it both
> to the console and to a file in /var/log and I never see anything.

Based on your pastebin, your bootscirpts aren't executing.  There
should be some nice "OK" messages printed out for things like doing
the mounts, bringing up networking, and starting services.  Your
output doesn't appear to have any of that.

Example:
init started: BusyBox v1.17.3 (2011-02-27 14:07:01 EST)
Starting mdev: OK
Mounting devpts: OK
Starting fsck for local filesystems.
Checking local filesystems: OK
Enabling swap space: OK
Remounting root rw: OK
Setting hostname: OK
Cleaning up system: OK
Setting up interface lo: OK
Running start scripts.
Starting syslogd: OK
Starting klogd: OK

I think that's part of your problem but possibly not the entire problem.
-Andrew