On Sat 07 Oct 2017 at 09:36:37 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote: > I'm looking for a comprehensive catalog of log files giving > location, name, and one line description. I've Googled and found > bits and pieces that are too narrowly focused. To paraphrase my > situation, I'm not only not seeing the forest for the trees -- I'm > also not seeing the forest for the leaves. > > My current problem is finding the appropriate logs to document the > details behind my addendum to Bug 852323. > > The BIOS of the test machine can select whether to boot from the > primary HDD or from a particular flash drive. There are multiple > instances of Debian installed. Grub was installed to the MBR of that > drive when Debian was installed to the drive's first partition. > > I have a hypothesis, but I need to have facts to back it up. > Specifically: > 1. During the installation process I need to inventory when and > "as what" various USB devices are recognized. The installation > target is a USB drive and Grub is being installed to its MBR.
It's all in /var/log/installer, specifically syslog. partman has the partitioning, and hardware-summary gives both that and related software summaries. That's all after the event, of course. While the d-i is running, syslog is under /var/log as normal. > 2. Under particular circumstances it will fail to boot. I need > to compare that log to that written when it successfully boots. With expert install, the splash/menu screen goes away and boot messages come out on the console in my experience. > 3. I need to know what happens during update-grub run from the HDD. > 4. I need to repeat [2] but for the case that the the Grub menu is > on the HDD. update-grub runs grub-mkconfig which is a script, so I suppose you could add set -x to make it print all its expanded commands (as I do in .xsession). Without getting into the specifics of that bug, ie UUID stuff, it might be worth pointing out that it has been reported here that a USB3 stick inserted at boot can demote the internal disk to /dev/sdb. No idea if that's relevant here unless you're using /dev/sdX without actually checking the by-id values that d-i displays in the relevant places. Cheers, David.
