#808 Issue closed: recover on identical hardware with new NIC, but not USB Keyboard input - using iso + USB key

dl5rcw opened issue at 2016-03-25 14:02:

  • rear version (/usr/sbin/rear -V):

1.17.2. / Git as well as 1.18 / Git

  • OS version (cat /etc/rear/os.conf or lsb_release -a):
    lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 (jessie)
Release: 8.3
Codename: jessie

  • rear configuration files (cat /etc/rear/site.conf or cat /etc/rear/local.conf):

OUTPUT=ISO
BACKUP=BAREOS
BAREOS_CLIENT=primaryserver
OUTPUT_URL=cifs://10.25.0.100/rearimages/
OUTPUT_OPTIONS="cred=/etc/rear/.cifs"

  • Brief description of the issue
    I am running

/usr/sbin/rear mkrescue -v

creating a iso on my NAS, which works fine. My server is used headless, but during install and maintenance, I (may - if not going ssh) use HDMI and a usb keyboard.

To test my setup, I have an exact clone of my hardware. The only difference is the network interface and MAC. I use unetbootin-windows-613 to copy the rear iso image to my usb stick. I use this stick for any linux installation, so I am sure that this one is fine. My clone hardware starts, but suddenly hangs with a message

The original network device eth0 00:11:22:33:44:55 is not available.
Please select another device:

  1. eth1 00:12:34:56:78:90 r8169
  2. Skip replacing the network device
         Choose the network device to use:  _

This of course is absolutely correct. However, my usb keyboard, which is plugged in during this process from the very beginning, does not accept any input. All I can do is to turn off my computer at this point. I then thought that maybe some kernel modules are missing and tried to force rear by adding

MODULES_LOAD=( input mousedev keybdev usbcore uhci_hcd usbhid )

to my config(right underneath BAREOS_CLIENT).

Still no luck. I then upgraded rear to 1.18 from Git. It behaves exactly the same. Am I missing out on something? Could it be that NIC modules are started before the USB module, creating a runtime issue here?

Dear community, I am absolutely stuck!

Thanks for any help or hints. I am really impressed by the concept of rear and would like to dive deeper into this fantastic tool once it is up and running for the first time! My idea is to do a PXE boot at the very end... but I somehow need to start out with a iso and USB solution to get a basic start.

  • all MAC addresses and server names were anonymized -

dl5rcw commented at 2016-04-07 14:40:

Solved by adding
LOAD_MODULES( cherry_hid )
to my local.conf.
I disconnected my keyboard when I executed the rear mkrescue via SSH or cronjob. The module was not loaded.
In order to find all kinds of available kernel modules of the hid-* (like hid-cherry), I searched my system by executing
find / -name "hid-*.ko" | sed 's/.*\///' | tr '-' '_' | sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/' | tr '\n' ' ' > /etc/rear/modlist.txt

[Export of Github issue for rear/rear.]