On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:42:24 -0500, Tom H wrote: > On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote: >> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:20:45 -0700, Bob Proulx wrote: >>> Hendrik Boom wrote: >>>> >>>> Won't boot. Gets stick at the initramfs prompt after complaining >>>> that it can't run /sbin/init >>>> >>>> I look with ls, and discover that /sbin exists, bit is totally >>>> empty. that seems a good reason to be unable to run /sbin/init. >>> >>> Does seem to be a good reason. I can't remember what is in the bin >>> directories of an initrd bootstrapping image. Pretty sure there is at >>> least something in /sbin though. And noting that for the most part I >>> think you will be working out of a busybox shell which is used to >>> reduce the amount of file system storage space needed in that early >>> boot time environment. >> >> Would it really be complaining about missing /sbin/init on the initrd >> ramdisk, or about /sbin/init being missing on the real root partition, >> which could be caused by not having mounted it yet? > > There isn't a "/sbin/init" in the initramfs. There's "/init", a shell script. > > You've reached the point where the initramfs expects the root fs to > have been moved. It seems to have failed but I don't understand why > there's an empty "/sbin" rather than no "/sbin".
I've taken the initrds apart for the kernel that boots and the kernel that doesn't boot. They both seem to have everything they ought to and not the empty directories I'm seeing. That isn't the problem. I now suspect that somehow it's seeing the wrong root partition or failing to see one at all and not noticing it. Maybe even a root-like partition that's lacking most of what it needs. Where that root partition comes from I don't know. Looking into that I examined the lilo configuration. Now I'm not sure this is indeed the lilo configuration that my successful boot floppy was made from, but the specification of the root partition is different in the stanzas for the old and new kernels. It, of course, shouldn't be. While keeping the successful boot floppy read-only, I'll use another floppy to run some recombitant variations of the different ways of specifying root partitions and find out which works. I've made too many changes in the system in the past few months, removing and adding hard drives, and it looks as if not everything was updated properly. Thanks for all the help so far; I really needed to know about the mdadm configuration and rebuilding initrd stuff. Now it looks as if I just need to debug my own boot configurations for grub and lilo. I will keep you posted. -- hendrik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/kckgib$6v8$1...@ger.gmane.org
