Bug#768657: [Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#768657: sysvinit: Please provide xen virtual console in inittab

[Samuel Thibault]

I'm not sure to understand what the original bug report is about
precisely.  AIUI, it is about the following scenario:

1) install debian in a Xen domU, ending up with systemd installed by
default
2) install sysvinit-core to switch back to sysvinit boot
3) end up having to fix this and that to get sysvinit work properly

I am not very surprised that it does not work.  The various tuning that
d-i does usually only work on what gets installed during d-i, not on
what gets installed later on.  That's particularly the case for software
which doesn't provide nice hooks for d-i to use them.

I'm just wondering one thing: between steps 1) and 2), does the
installed system (using systemd) properly have a login banner on hvc0?
If not, then it's indeed a problem, but not related with sysvinit
and inittab. In the current logic, some more code should be added to
finish-install's 90console script to handle the systemd case.  I don't
have a Xen system offhand to easily test that.

Cyril Brulebois, le Mon 10 Nov 2014 20:51:28 +0100, a écrit :
> Would it make any sense to have $something created by d-i, consumed by
> both systemd and sysvinit to make sure consoles are available?

It would make sense, but I'm not sure we can manage to write something
that both sysvinit and systemd can understand easily. "include" support
could be added to sysvinit, and /etc/inittab made to include the
d-i-generate bits, but it'd still be in inittab format, which AIUI
systemd wouldn't grok. So it would be something else, but then we would
have to make sysvinit aware of what a serial login is, which it has
never been made to, for flexibility reasons.

> Of course if I'm conflating issues that are orthogonal, please say so
> and we'll track both issues separately.

I actually haven't quoted the vt2-6 issue here because I don't think it
is related with d-i.

Samuel