Having trouble building Upstart 1.6.1 from source

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 9:06 PM, James Hunt <james.hunt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Firstly, are you aware that upstart 1.6.1 is already in Debian sid?
>
> http://packages.debian.org/sid/upstart

I wasn't, but I've had problems with sid and dependency resolution.
Also, the purpose of this experiment is to build from source :) But
quite possibly that would settle the underlying issue of wanting
Debian, Upstart, and clauses like 'setuid'.

> On 12/01/13 18:58, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> $ ./configure JSON_CFLAGS='-I/home/rosuav/json-c-0.10 -D_GNU_SOURCE'
>> JSON_LIBS='-L/home/rosuav/json-c-0.10 -ljson' --prefix=/usr
>> --exec-prefix= --sysconfdir=/etc
> It sounds like your system doesn't have pkg-config installed? This is a
> documented requirement in the README and when available it should 'just work'
> (see configure.ac where libjson checks are performed).

I do have pkg-config, but for some reason it can't find json properly.
Not sure how to point it to a different json other than with the full
cflags/libs override. It works for the others, though.

> You appear to be trying to build the latest *unreleased* code from lp:upstart.
>
> I would not recommend that unless you are tracking
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/Specs/RaringUpstartUserSessions
> extremely closely as the code is changing constantly.
>
> If you download the latest official release
> (https://launchpad.net/upstart/1.x/1.6.1/+download/upstart-1.6.1.tar.gz) life
> should become easier ;-)

I tried that one first, and had trouble, so I tried following a
different set of instructions that included "bzr branch lp:upstart".
Guess that just added to my problems :)

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/wiki/CompilingUpstart

> The situation should be fully recoverable. See:
>
> http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#boot-to-a-shell-directly

Oh, that's a lot easier, heh. Thanks!

> Having remounted the root FS read-write, maybe bring up the network ('dhclient
> eth0' or similar) and re-install the original init, then rebuild Upstart. For
> quick testing, you don't need to 'make install' - just build then copy init/init
> and util/initctl from your build area to appropriate names in /sbin/.

Alright. With that help, I've recovered the system to a semi-usable
state; I can get Upstart to boot. For some reason it's not starting
any terminals, though; boot would proceed part way, with a few
failures (mainly VirtualBox guest stuff, which I know about; also
avahi-daemon, but I doubt that's a big issue), and then stop dead. I
can get a shell going by creating a tty1.conf imitating an Ubuntu one,
but it seems odd that this didn't happen automatically with the
default jobs... anyway, I can now startx and get a GUI, and all! Yay!

Now I just need to figure out how I got here so I can do it all again
cleanly on a new system :)

Thanks for all your help!

Chris Angelico