Hosting Provided By

Re: "Waiting for root file system..." hang solved

From: Vidar Langseid <vl(at)ez.no>
Date: Fri Nov 16 2007 - 08:03:05 EST

> [This message has also been posted to linux.debian.user.]
>
> In article <9l0Hy-3FQ-5@gated-at.bofh.it>, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> > Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:
> > [snip upgrade instructions]
> >
> > Thanks for posting your experience! I am sure it will be useful to
> > others.
> >
> >> You could have a debate about whether this is an installer
> >> bug, a kernel package bug, a udev bug, or operator error.
> >
> > If I understand correctly, you upgraded the kernel and the new kernel
> > would not boot. Then it would be a kernel bug.
>
> That was my initial conclusion. But then I spent some time
> googling for the error messages. A lot of people have had this
> same hang, and most of them got there by some other path than I did.
> So I think it may be a more general problem than that.
Yes, and I is one of them who just experienced it. Just installed Etch but on first boot after installation I got the "Waiting for root file system..."

My (old) mainbord (BE6) have two IDE hardisk controlles onboard. One generic IDE controller (piix) and a hpt366 controller.

It seems that in default kernel in Etch that all IDE drivers are loaded as modules. If you then have multiple IDE controllers you are in trouble because the IDE kernel modules will be loaded in random order. In my case, if the hpt366 kernel module is loaded first, the disks attached to it will be named hda, hdb, hdc and hdd. It the piix kernel module is loaded first, then those disks will be named hda, hdb, hdc and hdd (the hpt366 disks will then be named hde, hdf, hdg and hdh) .

This was never a problem with Sarge kernel images because there the generic IDE controller drivers was compiled into the kernel (thus loaded before any modules) while other IDE drivers (like hpt366) was compiled as modules. I guess everyone with multiple IDE controllers will end up with the same problem and the debian installer doesn't warn you about this.

I was going to report this as bug report but not sure in which package the bug report should be assigned to. I guess relevant packages are kernel, debian installer, mkinitrd?
Not sure how this should be fixed either. Using ext2/ext3 labels in fstab and grub config is one way I guess. Using UUID ( http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2006/08/11/stable-root-device-aka-uuid/ ) in fstab and grub config is probably another way. A 3rd solution would be to enforce that that one kernel module (piix in my case) is loaded before an other (hpt366 in my case) but that is not possible AFAIK. Or is it ?
Not sure if it is possible to fix this with udev rules. I suspect the IDE kernel modules are loaded before udev daemon is started though......

PS
Please CC me on any reply as I am not subscribed to the list. Sorry for also messing up the threading but had to cut&past from the archive ( http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2007/11/msg00215.html ) and had no idea how to set the message-id correctly when replying...

Best regards,
Vidar L

-- 
vl@ez.no | eZ systems | ez.no


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org

Received on Fri Nov 16 08:19:20 2007

Do you need help?

This message: [ Message body ]
Next message: Florian Kulzer: "Re: problems with eps from grace"
Previous message: Raj Kiran Grandhi: "Re: browser oddities"
Maybe in reply to: Cameron L. Spitzer: ""Waiting for root file system..." hang solved"
Next in thread: Cameron L. Spitzer: "Re: Re: "Waiting for root file system..." hang solved"
Reply: Cameron L. Spitzer: "Re: Re: "Waiting for root file system..." hang solved"

Contemporary messages sorted: [ By Date ] [ By Thread ] [ By Subject ] [ By Author ] [ By messages with attachments ]

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Feb 25 2008 - 16:04:23 EST