Arch Linux

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

Hi!
I performed an upgrade yesterday and my computer just doesn't start today. It says that the root device does'nt exist and cannot create it, and i am dropped to a recovery shell.
don't know what to do.

schivmeister

Developer/TU

From: Singapore

Registered: 2007-05-17

Posts: 971

Website

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

1) Boot with the fallback image
2) Edit GRUB menu.lst
3) Tell us what and how many disks you have

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I need real, proper pen and paper for this.

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

thanks for the fast answer

1) how?
2) in which way?
3) one disk, three partitions: /dev/hda5 is /, then /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda7.

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

at boot there is a line that says: sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 sda6 sda7 >
so it looks like to me that hda* became sda*

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

that's indeed it. hda* became sda*. I was able to mount what used to be hda5 (now sda5) and I can access the boot/grub subdir, but how do I edit the menu.lst? there is no vi in this recovery shell!

klixon

Member

From: Nederland

Registered: 2007-01-17

Posts: 525

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

I think the easiest way for now would be to reboot and, in the grub menu, select the option you want to boot. Press 'e' instead of enter and change the root=/dev/hda5 to root=/dev/sda5, press enter and 'b'.

This should get you to the point where you are at least out of early userspace before being dropped into a recovery shell. Then do this:

# mount -o remount,rw /
# nano /boot/grub/menu.lst (change root=/dev/hda5 to root=/dev/sda5)

# nano /etc/fstab (change all /dev/hda* entries to /dev/sda* entries)

After that, press CTRL-D to reboot.

Things should now work properly, i hope

edit was a typo...

Last edited by klixon (2008-04-03 12:20:32)

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Stand back, intruder, or i'll blast you out of space! I am Klixon and I don't want any dealings with you human lifeforms. I'm a cyborg!

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

I thought of that, unfortunately my timeouts in menu.lst are set to 0 and I have no time to press e.
A live-cd could also help, but I have none at hand.

by the way, why did this swap hd* sd* happen? what will happen to what used to be sd* (usb flashdisks)?

schivmeister

Developer/TU

From: Singapore

Registered: 2007-05-17

Posts: 971

Website

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

So currently you do not have a GRUB prompt? If that's the case then you need to go live, yes. Or you can install some other OS in some free space and access the disks from there.

This is due to libata, the entire system including ide devices is under scsi (emulation).

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I need real, proper pen and paper for this.

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

why did it change from ide to scsi? is it a default or something of the kind? can I go back and keep on using ide? what is advisable?

Zepp

Member

From: Ontario, Canada

Registered: 2006-03-25

Posts: 334

Website

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

You can avoid this situation in the future by mounting your partitions via labels instead of device names.

edit:
Here I found a nice quick little how-to about them for you http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/522

Last edited by Zepp (2008-04-03 16:34:34)

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

Well, the change in the kernel happened quite some time ago (http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_19#h … 1328b1ddce), but the old drivers were still available. It seems that they are still available in 2.6.24-kernels http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_24#h … 16b15ebfca, but the probably the support is finally dropped.

And by the way, having timeout=0 in grub is a bad idea in my opinion. One second doesn't take that much (probably about one second), and having access to grub might be needed sometimes (like now).

Gauvenator

Member

Registered: 2008-04-03

Posts: 172

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

Couldn't he hold down an arrow key while booting so that grub doesn't timeout?

klixon

Member

From: Nederland

Registered: 2007-01-17

Posts: 525

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

not when timeout == 0

And a boot from install-cd, usb-drive or other OS on a spare partition and chrooting seems the only viable solution, apart from a reinstall i think

Last edited by klixon (2008-04-04 12:11:19)

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Stand back, intruder, or i'll blast you out of space! I am Klixon and I don't want any dealings with you human lifeforms. I'm a cyborg!

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

booting through labels seems very nice indeed. Is there a way to do something like it with usb drives? When I plug my drives their sda* sdb* names in /dev depend on the time I plug them, could that be avoided?

tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

@ambalex - You may be able to use udev.  The most up-to-date information (that I know of) is in /etc/udev/readme-udev-arch.txt.  I don't know how recent this wiki page is, but it may also be helpful:  /etc/udev/readme-udev-arch.txt.

Last edited by tigrmesh (2008-04-22 22:15:59)

ambalex

Member

Registered: 2004-11-17

Posts: 87

Re: dropped into recovery shell at boot after upgrade

I found this wiki page
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Per … ice_naming

which does what I want and could have avoided me this issue.

Thanks for all the support.