Arch Linux

max_sipos

Member

From: Ithaca, NY

Registered: 2004-10-31

Posts: 106

Website

initramfs problem when booting

Hello,

I've been trying to install Arch Linux on an older laptop that doesn't boot from USB or CD.

I've been following the instructions from http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … her_distro, but I'm having this show up on boot:

:: Loading root filesystem module...
Attempting to create root device '/dev/hda1'
unknown
Error: root fs cannot be detected. Try using the rootfstype= kernel parameter.
Waiting for devices to settle...done.

Root device 'dev/hda1' doesn't exist, attempting to create it
ERROR: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/hda1'
ERROR: Unable to create/detect root device '/dev/hda1'
...
try adding 'rootdelay=8' or higher to the kernel command-line

Adding rootfstype=ext2 and rootdelay=15 to grub didn't help.

echo * in /dev/ doesn't show anything like a hard disk.

Grub is installed on the MBR, /dev/hda1 should be the root disk (menu.lst is properly found, and I double checked with gparted on Ubuntu).

My suspition lies with the pacman -S kernel26 step performed in chroot, but I'm hoping people will know more about this.

Max

schivmeister

Developer/TU

From: Singapore

Registered: 2007-05-17

Posts: 971

Website

Re: initramfs problem when booting

new ide driver (pata) and kernels since *.17 or *.18 use s* device naming scheme, such as sda1 and sr0. edit mkinitcpio, make sure it's at least like this:

HOOKS=base udev autodetect pata filesystems

and don't worry about the MODULES part. Then (as root) mkinitcpio -p kernelname.Just make sure u have all configs relating to /dev/sd* instead of hd* especially in fstab and menu.lst

Last edited by schivmeister (2007-12-21 18:22:28)

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I need real, proper pen and paper for this.