maemo.org - Talk - [Avahi-WIP] reboot loop in normal mode, boots fine in R&D mode.. WT*?

This is a complicated story. I have been trying to get avahi running on the n9 for some time now, and it seems I almost got it. I used inception to "liberate" my phone from the tyrannical opressors who have stolen its soul from me.

Then, I installed the following packages from this repository using incept <pkgname>:

Code:

avahi-daemon_0.6.24-0maemo0harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

bind9-host_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libavahi-client3_0.6.24-0maemo0harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libavahi-common3_0.6.24-0maemo0harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libavahi-common-data_0.6.24-0maemo0harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libavahi-core5_0.6.24-0maemo0harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libbind9-60_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libdaemon0_0.13-0maemo0harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libdns64_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libisc60_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libisccc60_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

libisccfg60_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

liblwres60_9.7.0.dfsg.P1-1maemo3harmattan-eb1_armel.deb

After installined I tried starting avahi through opensh:

Code:

/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon start

And I got some errors about avahi not able to connect to Dbus. Restarted phone. Boot loop. Damn.

The interesting part is that when I forced the phone into R&D mode using flasher:

Code:

sudo flasher --set-rd-flags=no-lifeguard-reset --enable-rd-mode

The phone came back from the dead! It booted, and everything worked fine! Even Avahi was working!

I spent almost 5 hours investigating why does the phone get in a boot loop. I tried preventing avahi from starting on boot (by deleting the avahi script in /etc/network and the avahi spec from/etc/dbus-1/system.d/). I checked /etc/network/interfaces and saw it was identical to the default. In the end, I uninstalled avahi-daemon and bind9-host, but to no avail. As soon as I disable R&D mode with flasher, the phone gets in a boot loop.

From the debs, I saw the following new files were installed (apart from some libraries, that probably didn't cause the loop):

Code:

/usr/sbin/avahi-daemon

/etc/avahi/*

/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon

/etc/dbus-0/system.d/avahi-daemon.conf

/usr/bin/host

It is interesting that when I tried installing Avahi from the same repo, but with apt-get and devel-su, it didn't cause a reboot loop, and Avahi didn't work.

It seems like "bricking" the phone is so damn easy. I bet there is some kind of hash check or something that prevents boot in normal mode. I have used Linux for more than 5 years now because it is robust. It is ironic though how easy it is to screw up your n9 and end up reflashing it.

In R&D mode, everything was working fine. I considered staying in R&D mode, but the front LED would keep flashing - it's very annoying.