[Buildroot] Freeze on "Starting Kernel"

Thomas Petazzoni thomas.petazzoni at bootlin.com
Tue Sep 15 13:30:03 UTC 2020


Hello Rob,

On Tue, 15 Sep 2020 12:20:38 +0200
<rob.r374 at gmail.com> wrote:

> As a Buildroot newbie I'm experimenting with different setups, packages and
> customizations.
> 
> My system frequently freezes at the point, where it seems to jump to code
> from certain image 
> 
> - it says >Starting Kernel< and then nothing happens. 
> 
> For instance I add few additional packages to the buildroot build and then
> suddenly, kernel doesn't start.

Adding just a few more user-space packages should definitely not cause
this, *except* if you're using an initramfs filesystem and your kernel
image has grown too large.

> Can I somehow setup things to get any useful feedback about what is wrong in
> such situation ?

If you're on ARM32, you can enable CONFIG_DEBUG_LL and CONFIG_EARLYPRINTK
in your kernel configuration, specify a debug UART in the kernel
configuration, and pass "earlyprintk" on the kernel command line.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com



More information about the buildroot mailing list