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

[Andrew Bradford]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Lance Jump <lancej29 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I started from a brand new Ubuntu 10.04LTS installation and have gotten to
> the same point.  I am beginning to suspect that it has something to do with
> my linux configuration since that is the one part that is not covered in
> detail so I would be easy for me to mess up.  Can you send me the config
> file from your working Beagle Board build?  Or any build based on the latest
> ARM CLFS?

I'm not sure if I have a super recent kernel config file, but one that
should work for a BeagleBoard-xM is located:
https://gist.github.com/869020

A make oldconfig should work to fix up anything that changed between
the rc release that's from and the 2.6.38.2 in the book.

A complete stab in the dark, but do you have any framebuffers built
into your kernel?  If so, maybe that's where the login goes?
I'm also starting to think your kernel config might be the issue.  Any
chance you can get a manufacturer supplied kernel config?

> I found what I believe are two additional bugs, but I don't either are the
> cause of the problem.  The first is in section 16.2 where has the
> /dev/console and null nodes made in ${CLFS}.  I think they should be made in
> ${CLFS}-final at that point.

I think you might be right.  Can you either open a trac ticket or send
a patch to -dev?
Would it be worthwhile to create these nodes before ${CLFS}-final
comes into play? (I think yes, if this is a problem)

Also, try booting without these nodes (once your booting works, maybe
this is the issue?), see if it works for you.  On my BeagleBoard-xM I
don't need them.  But then I heard rumblings on IRC that they are
actually needed.  I'm not sure what to think.  Any input would be
welcome.

> The other is in the clfs-embedded-bootscripts Makfile.  The line:
>
>    install -d -m ${DIRMODE} ${EXTDIR}/rc.d/{init.d,start,stop}
>
> appears to actually make a directory named "{init.d,start,stop}" instead of
> three directories.

Yeah...  That's a problem.  The bootscripts referenced by the book are
out of date.  That needs to be fixed.  For now, grab a copy from the
bootscripts git repo and use that.  That has the fix for this.  Some
systems will work fine with the curly bracket expansion, others won't.
 Most recent commit was to fix this exact problem, must have been that
a tarball wasn't created after that update.  Probably worth opening a
trac ticket for this, building the tarball should really be automated
like building of the books are using a post commit hook...

http://git.cross-lfs.org/?p=bootscripts-embedded.git

-Andrew