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#1 2009-04-17 00:09:53

megajosh2
Member
Registered: 2009-04-15
Posts: 57

Grub booting problem: "Root device 'UUID=9d18...' doesn't exist..."

I've tried to install Arch Linux from my Ubuntu, but I'm having a problem booting into it. Since grub-install didn't work, I tried to add an entry to my menu.lst for grub. /dev/sdb1 is the Arch partition. On the official guide for installing from an existing Linux, it says:

If when you reboot into your new system you get a error messages like this:

Root device '/dev/sda1' doesn't exist, attempting to create it... etc.

This means the drives are showing up as "hda1" instead of "sda1" In which case change your GRUB or LILO settings to use "hd??" or try the following.

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and change "ide" to "pata" in the "HOOKS=" line. Then regenerate your initrd. (Make sure you have chroot'ed into the new system first.)

But I'm not using /dev/sdxx as the root device, I'm using a UUID. I double checked that I'm using the right UUID:

# ls -lF /dev/disk/by-uuid
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-04-16 15:43 423B-2BDF -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-04-16 15:43 4CF41666F4165316 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-04-16 15:43 59265c72-04f9-45b7-ade0-2d72e2e49630 -> ../../sdb2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-04-16 15:43 9d1893b1-115a-46b5-9147-4108416c1309 -> ../../sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-04-16 15:43 c45637f5-cb46-48d6-95ff-295e3fd44cb1 -> ../../sdb4

# cat /boot/grub/menu.lst | grep 9d1893b1-115a-46b5-9147-4108416c1309
uuid        9d1893b1-115a-46b5-9147-4108416c1309
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz26 root=UUID=9d1893b1-115a-46b5-9147-4108416c1309 ro

Also, there is no "ide" in the "HOOKS=" line.

I thought this might have something to do with not being able to run grub-install while chroot'd into Arch:

# grub-install /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdd1: Not found or not a block device.

Here's my menu.lst entry:

# Arch Linux
title           Arch Linux
uuid            9d1893b1-115a-46b5-9147-4108416c1309
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz26 root=UUID=9d1893b1-115a-46b5-9147-4108416c1309 ro
initrd          /boot/kernel26.img
quiet

Can anyone help me figure this out?

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#2 2009-04-17 01:47:41

normman
Member
Registered: 2009-04-07
Posts: 26

Re: Grub booting problem: "Root device 'UUID=9d18...' doesn't exist..."

Have you tried adding ide to your hooks line, as described here:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mkinitcpio ?
Do you need the uuid line in the menu.lst?
Also, have you tried replacing the UUID in the menu.lst with /dev/sdb1?
Finally, why are you running grub-install if you already have grub?

Last edited by normman (2009-04-17 01:49:17)

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#3 2009-04-17 15:01:35

megajosh2
Member
Registered: 2009-04-15
Posts: 57

Re: Grub booting problem: "Root device 'UUID=9d18...' doesn't exist..."

I eventually solved my own problem. That Mkinitcpio pointed me in the right direction, and then I realized: I didn't finish configuring the system! I'm just glad that's all fixed now. Apparently I needed to use /dev/sdb1 instead of UUID=... for the root device.

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