autofs & opensuse13.2 / login screen problem

Hi,

I have a problem with Opensuse13.2 and autofs.
After

systemctl enable autofs
and reboot, the login screen doesn’t appear.
Moreover, if I display kernel instructions (with Escape while openSuse loads), the login screen appears.

I didn’t find any solution for this bug. I just saw in this post https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/514207-OpenSuse-13-1-won-t-display-login?p=2759258#post2759258 that the problem seems to be known.
Is there any solution ?

Thank you
Thomas

I hope you understand that 13.2 is out of support. That means that while people here will be willing to help you, there are not many that still have a ruining 13.2 and thus will not be able to re-create your problem.

IMO you probably need to describe what you’re using autofs for, and likely how you’re using it.

Also, for awhile now (and I think even in the 13.2 kernel), autofs is implemented as a kernel module, so you may need to verify it’s loaded and available.
eg

modprobe autofs

TSU

Thank you for your answers

I know but for multiple reasons, the computer still runs 13.2. I just asks to know if someone already solved the problem.

The result is that:

modprobe autofs
modprobe: ERROR: could not find module by name='autofs4'
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'autofs4': Function not implemented

I use autofs to load with nfs, remote folders alvailable on different computers in the local network. I follow the instructions described on:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Autofs#NFS_Network_mounts
ie. in /etc/hosts, I have the the ip adress and the name of the other computers, and in /etc/auto.nfs the mounting folders.

It works well if I do

systemctl start autofs

so I wanted to definitely activate autofs instead of using the previous line.

Thank you
Thomas

I do not know specially about autofs, but normally start and stop is just that. Enable/disable enables it to start at boot.

Or use YaST > System > Services Manager to do both.

I know and this is the reason I wanted to enable autofs.
I also tried with Yast but I had the same results.

I think the problem comes when autofs starts at boot. But, the computer is totally frozen, I can’t have access to kernel instructions (with Esc) or terminal (with Ctrl+Alt+F?). So I can’t check.

Thank you
Thomas

Try to remove the line “Before=systemd-logind.service” in /usr/lib/systemd/system/autofs.service (better copy the file to /etc/systemd/system/ first and edit the copy though, otherwise updates may overwrite your change, but then 13.2 won’t get any more updates anyway…).

This can cause a racing problem during boot, because logind will only be started after autofs which may be too late.

Could you not simply use fstab (stating that the mount-points are nfs) to automatically mount your mount-points?

Maybe 13.2 was still using a kernel that didn’t have a kernel with autofs available as a kernel module… IIRC it should have been introduced somewhere around 3.14?
Pls post your kernel

uname -a

I assume you have autofs installed from if you have a Unit file created for it, unless you created it yourself or copied it from elsewhere.
Pls display the following which searches your repos for any autofs packages and whether they are installed

zypper se autofs

TSU

Hi,

I just try that idea but it doesn’t work. But it seems to be a good idea, I will do more test in next days.

I’m not sure about that but in our case, I want to deploy this service on a laptop. That means that when the laptop isn’t connected to the local network, It can’t connect to the remote nfs server. I thought with fstab, the laptop will fail to start in a such case.

uname -a
Linux 3.16.6-2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Oct 20 13:47:22 UTC 2014 (feb42ea) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

zypper se autofs
S | Name    | Resume                     | Type         
--+--------+----------------------------+--------------
i | autofs | A Kernel-Based Automounter | package       
  | autofs | A Kernel-Based Automounter | source package

(it was written in French, I translated the output, so maybe the words are not exactly the correct ones. Sorry)

Thank you for you answers, I will continue to investigate.
Thomas

Use nofail option to prevent boot lock when the NFS is not present

If it doesn’t work, then you have a different problem.

What does “sudo systemctl status display-manager.service” output when you boot with autofs enabled and the login screen fails to appear?

I just noticed this sentence in your first post though:

Moreover, if I display kernel instructions (with Escape while openSuse loads), the login screen appears.

This would suggest that your problem is actually related to plymouth, the boot splash.
Does it help if you disable that by adding “plymouth.enable=0” to the boot options?

uname -a
Linux 3.16.6-2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Oct 20 13:47:22 UTC 2014 (feb42ea) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Update your system. That kernel is old, the current 13.2 kernel is 3.16.7-53.
Maybe that will not help with your problem, but still a good idea.

But the 13.2 kernel definitely does not come with an “autofs” kernel module, not even the latest version.
It seems to be built in:

wolfi@amiga:~> uname -a
Linux amiga 3.16.7-53-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Dec 2 13:19:28 UTC 2016 (7b4a1f9) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
wolfi@amiga:~> zgrep -i autofs /proc/config.gz 
CONFIG_AUTOFS4_FS=y

zypper se autofs
S | Name    | Resume                     | Type         
--+--------+----------------------------+--------------
i | autofs | A Kernel-Based Automounter | package       
  | autofs | A Kernel-Based Automounter | source package

Well, this doesn’t tell which version from which repo.
Please use “zypper se -s autofs” for more details.
Btw, there have been several updates for autofs in 13.2 too.

Yes, but that would still cause a delay/timeout during boot if the share is not available I think.

I disabled plymouth and it works !
I just prefer the next solution: splash=verbose instead of splash=silent, (this is almost the same thing)
Thank you for your help.
Thomas