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no login promopt on console

PostPosted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 4:14 pm
by mauvehead
I have a Xen VPS that I've successfully booted into 2.6.32-23-grsec. The VPS offers an AJAX console that gives me out of band management to my server during reboots or loss of network. From this console during boot I can monitor everything that is happening but once the system comes online, it fails to load the /etc/issue file or display a login screen. I am very new to grsec and have tried to search the forums, mailing list and wiki for details. I verified that booting into a regular kernel results in the expected login prompt, so its certainly something in grsec. RBAC is currently disable.

The .config was a template provided by the VPS company. I originally tried using a vanilla .config with some minor mods but that refused to boot. Here is my current .config from the kernel: http://pastebin.com/7DG8vYHH

Boot messages:
Booting 'Custom Compiled, kernel 2.6.32.23-grsec'

root (hd0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, using whole disk
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32.23-grsec root=/dev/xvda ro quiet

close blk: backend at /local/domain/0/backend/vbd/121/51712
close blk: backend at /local/domain/0/backend/vbd/121/51728
i8042.c: No controller found.
grsec: time set by /sbin/hwclock[hwclock:982] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0, parent /sbin/init[init:1] u
id/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
/dev/xvda: clean, 271021/1032192 files, 2794048/4128768 blocks

* Starting domain name service... bind9 [fail]
* Starting virtual private network daemon(s)...
SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon: disabled, see /etc/default/spamassassin
* Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent postfix
grsec: time set by /usr/sbin/ntpdate[ntpdate:1963] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0, parent /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate[ntpdat
e:1903] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0
* Starting NTP server ntpd [ OK ]
* Starting IMAP/POP3 mail server dovecot
* Starting web server apache2 [ OK ]

At this point nothing more happens. This is where the console should clear and display my /etc/issue followed by a prompt, but it does not.

Re: no login promopt on console

PostPosted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 5:44 am
by PaX Team
mauvehead wrote:The .config was a template provided by the VPS company. I originally tried using a vanilla .config with some minor mods but that refused to boot. Here is my current .config from the kernel: http://pastebin.com/7DG8vYHH
try to disable PaX features and see if it gets any further. also seemingly the system boots into userland so chances are that dmesg is saved somewhere (e.g., /var/log/messages) and you can look at it later when you boot a working kernel, maybe you'll find some messages from grsec/PaX that'll give us a clue.

Re: no login promopt on console

PostPosted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 7:40 pm
by mauvehead
This has been resolved

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SerialConsoleHowto
Follow only the "Configuring the console login process" part for your version, replacing all instances of "ttyS0" with "hvc0". Ignore the rest of article.