Framebuffers, plymouth, upstart and server installs.

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Sander Smeenk's message of 2013-01-03 13:53:39 -0800:
> Hello list,
> 
> I recently got directed here from ubuntu-devel-discuss with my
> pet-peeves on how i think Ubuntu Server is not really tailored for
> servers [anymore], the thread of which you can read up on here:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2013-January/014163.html
> 
> I wrote about these issues in an earlier thread on this list too:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-server/2011-April/thread.html
> 
> Basically it boils down to quotes from the above shown threads;
> | "I like to be able to watch the [boot] process happen. [ .. ] I don't
> | care if my server looks pretty when it's booting.  I do care that I
> | can see at what point in the boot process a catastrophic failure has
> | occurred."
> and;
> | "[ .. ] under no circumstance should a server blindly come up in a mode
> | in which it cannot display to a virtual console. Never. Ever. No Excuse."
> 
> In fact, and i really, *really* don't mean to insult any one involved in
> ubuntu-server development, but i kind-of wonder if the people putting
> all this hard work in ubuntu-server are actually using ubuntu-server on a
> daily basis on more than one system like a lot of sysadmins like myself
> do.
> 

I can say that the paid developers of Ubuntu server (of which I was one
until fairly recently) do not administer many servers directly. However,
the entire Operations team behind Ubuntu does administer many servers,
and feeds data back to that team fairly rapidly. There's no special
treatment given though, they report bugs just like you can report bugs.

> Me and my team manage roughly 200 servers running Ubuntu. We encounter
> situations where we have old CRT monitors, shady KVM-switches and crappy
> ILOM/ELOM/DRAC java implementations with which we have to manage our
> servers. Situations where (we/the customer) botched something up which
> makes the bootprocess fail, etc.
> 

I came to work on Ubuntu server from an environment very similar. I
was quite surprised to see how quiet Ubuntu 10.04 was. You failed to
mention versions though. Since 10.04, a lot of changes have been made
specifically to make server users' lives better. This includes logging
of all upstart job output, and the upstart<->plymouth bridge that tells
you what jobs are starting/stopping. Also friendly recovery makes it a
lot easier to handle disk issues.

> Framebuffers, or rather 'special video modes', are somewhat unstable on
> server hardware and/or plain right incompatible with shady KVM
> implementations which are, unfortunately, commonly used in colocated
> environments.
> 
> What i really want to know is 'why' all this is necessary on server
> installs ad what we / i can do to get a clearer view on what is
> actually going on during boot.
> 
> The path Ubuntu Server followed from Ubuntu Desktop is to depend on
> framebuffers and upstart during boot and to switch off the GRUB menu
> by default.
> 
> I'd like to propose the (re)introduction of a special '-server' kernel
> which has no framebuffers enabled? Some mechanism to tune GRUB into
> verbose, 80x24 text mode when installed on a Server setup? Implement
> 'tee(1)' functionality in Upstart perhaps?
> 

Upstart logs all job output to /var/log/upstart now, since at least 12.04,
maybe 11.10. So that much is at least handled.

As far as a -server kernel, thats quite drastic. I'm fairly certain
you can just disable the framebuffer using command line arguments,
which could be made default on server installs.

> Is any of this discussable? 

Yes. I'd recommend that you report some of these as bugs and bring them
back here for discussion. None of the problem statements you have above
are controversial, so the only hurdle is getting them done.