Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting for Gentoo Clients

For TDs & Advanced Users

The following actions describe troubleshooting steps that should be performed by a Technical Director or IT Professional. Advanced Users are welcome to follow this guide if they are inclined, but they are not required to do so. Any issue related to System Memory (random crashes/freezes), Changes to the Linux Kernel or Restoring a Users Computer should be referred to the Technical Director or IT Department.

Boot into the IPXE menu

If you can login to the computer

1. Launch a terminal window and become root
2. Use cd to enter to the computers root directory
3. ./reboot_to_ipxe.sh will automatically reboot the computer

Otherwise boot computer from LIVE USB

1. Check your computer’s manual to open boot menu
2. Select the USB from the computers boot menu

If successful, you will be greated with the following screen

Run MEM Test

1. Boot into IPXE
2. Select “Run MemTest”

Chrooting into the root drive (for recovery)

1. Boot into IPXE
2. Select Gentoo Installer (Blender Institute Customized)
3. Wait for Gentoo Installer to boot
4. Use CTR+C to cancel Installer
5. Run  ./manual_chroot.sh
6. Select number corrisponding to the Drive labeled rootfs

Recovery/Inspection of Linux Kernel

1. Follow steps in Chrooting into the root drive

2. Ensure the mount the boot drive is mounted mount /boot

3. Go into the kernel source dir cd /usr/src/linux

4. Use make menuconfig to enter linux kernel configuration

5. Now you can review/change the kernel configuration options! For example you can inspect the NVME Drive configuration and compare it to the configuration found in the Gentoo documentation https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVMe#Kernel

6. On exit, if your kernel config is not saved you will be prompted to save

7. Configuration successfully saved

8. Build New Kernel: make -j8 && make modules_install && make install