Arch Linux

windsheep

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 17

"Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

Hi!

After an update - seemingly unsuccessfull - I get dropped into a recovery shell. The messages are:

/usr/lib/suspend/resume: /usr/lib/libpng14: version `PNG14_0`not found (required by /usr/lib/libsplshrender.so.1)
ERROR: unable to find root device '/dev/sda2'

I read that now I'm supposed to run a LiveCD and chroot something... can someone please be a little more specific here? I don't want to lose that system and I have no idea why it doesn't find my disk anymore. I just performed a pacman4 uprade, but it seems pacman4 is rather immature, leaving a system unuseable like that.

There is no sdaX in /dev any more. And I have very little experience with recovering Arch Linux. Until now

Best,
wishi

hadrons123

Member

From: chennai

Registered: 2011-10-07

Posts: 1,249

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

i think there is already few threads on this

windsheep

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 17

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

I have some wild problems here

1.) I used an Arch Live CD, did the chroot trick from the wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ch … nging_Root) and rebuild my initcpio (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mkinitcpio). That ends successfull, and says it adds hooks for sata etc.

-> But I had to remove the udev hook: http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=11304 - I guess that's the reason why it still doesn't find my /dev/sda2 - I'm not sure this is related though.

2.) I ran pacman -Qk to ensure everything is sane. No errors.  I reinstalled linux and udev two minutes ago. No change.

But I don't see how I can fix this. What's that voodoo with some udev hooks wandering around? The new kernel is 3.2.5-1 ARCH.

hadrons123

Member

From: chennai

Registered: 2011-10-07

Posts: 1,249

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

Try downgrading to a  older kernel and udev too.

Last edited by hadrons123 (2012-02-15 18:09:58)

windsheep

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 17

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

Is there a way to install an older kernel through pacman? I guess through all the kungfu I did the cache is now empty. So my old kernel is gone... yeahr quite some stunt. I know....

edit: oki, even if I pull a backup of my linux 3.0 I cannot add the udev hook to mkinitcpio. Do I need to downgrade udev too???

Last edited by windsheep (2012-02-15 18:17:43)

hadrons123

Member

From: chennai

Registered: 2011-10-07

Posts: 1,249

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Do … g_Packages

I hope this helps.

Last edited by hadrons123 (2012-02-15 18:18:17)

windsheep

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 17

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

A little, udev isn't the simple downgrade here... without it I'm just stuck at the same problem.

hadrons123

Member

From: chennai

Registered: 2011-10-07

Posts: 1,249

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

I don't really get you.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

I have some wild problems here
-> But I had to remove the udev hook: http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=11304 - I guess that's the reason why it still doesn't find my /dev/sda2 - I'm not sure this is related though.

You had to? Based on what: a post in a forum thread for another distro?

---

Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

andolanra

Member

Registered: 2012-02-16

Posts: 2

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

I'm in (I believe) a similar situation. After a full system update, Arch can't find the root device. I tried the advice in https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1058134 and that didn't work, so I downgraded the kernel to 3.0.3 (from 3.2.5) so now mkinitcpio doesn't yield any errors or warnings, and yet it still drops me into a recovery shell when it can't find /dev/sda* when I boot. I've also tried downgrading mkinitcpio and udev (and consequently, due to dependency issues, initscripts) and I still have the same problem. Any advice?

andolanra

Member

Registered: 2012-02-16

Posts: 2

Re: "Unable to find root device /dev/sda2"

Disregard that comment—the downgrade worked for me. I think I must have forgotten to mount /boot the first time I tried it or something. Sorry for the noise!