[SOLVED] Initramfs trim: "device '/dev/sda3' not fount" still boots.

Trilby · 2012-09-01 14:26:53

SOLUTION I should have never removed UUIDs from my fstab, instead I should have ADDED them to my bootloader config. Putting UUIDs back in fstab and adding the UUID for my root partition to syslinux.cnf solved this.
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I've been pruning my initramfs following falconindy's blog post which I learned about from success stories in the systemd startup times thread.

I ended up with this mkinitcpio.conf

MODULES="ahci sd_mod ext4"
BINARIES="fsck fsck.ext4"
HOOKS="base consolefont"
COMPRESSION="lzop"

I've also tried without the compression method specified. I've added in a couple modules which I admittedly don't know much about, but I found them in the lsmod list after appending the "break=postmount" to a working initramfs. These included uhci_hcd and ehci_hcd.

In every case I get the same error message on boot:

device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck
Unable to find root device '/dev/sda3'

and I am dropped to a recovery shell. There is a message that says (paraphrasing) "type exit to attempt to continue". I type exit and hit enter and I get a message:

Trying to continue (This will likely fail)

But it does not fail - it works perfectly and the system boots successfully.

So in short - everything works, but there is some early boot test that "thinks" it won't work and leads to me having to exit from a recovery shell.

I realized my fstab still had UUIDs, so I changed those to /dev/sdaX and rebuilt the initramfs, but this had no effect.

The best I can guess (and it is a wild guess) is that the only remaining difference between the working initramfs and this problematic stripped down version is the absence of udev. I did look at a diff of the lsinitcpio of a working version and the failing trimmed down version. I've removed any items that went both ways in the diff output (eg ">some/file ... <some/file") and this is what remains:

7c6
< ./hooks/udev
---
16,18d14
< ./usr/bin/fsck.ext3
20,21c16,17
< ./usr/bin/udevadm
< ./usr/bin/udevd
---
130a127,128
> ./usr/lib/libpthread-2.16.so
> ./usr/lib/libpthread.so.0
137,151d134
< ./usr/lib/udev
< ./usr/lib/udev/scsi_id
< ./usr/lib/udev/ata_id
< ./usr/lib/udev/rules.d
< ./usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-drivers.rules
< ./usr/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage.rules
< ./usr/lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules
< ./usr/lib/libpthread-2.16.so
< ./usr/lib/libpthread.so.0
< ./usr/lib/libattr.so.1.1.0
< ./usr/lib/libattr.so.1
< ./usr/lib/librt-2.16.so
< ./usr/lib/librt.so.1
< ./usr/lib/libacl.so.1.1.0
< ./usr/lib/libacl.so.1
254a238,246
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/hwa-hc.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/isp116x-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/isp1362-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/isp1760.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/ohci-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/oxu210hp-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/r8a66597-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/sl811-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/u132-hcd.ko
255a248,250
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/whci-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/xhci-hcd.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/ftdi-elan.ko
256a252,256
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/wusb-wa.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/wusbcore.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/umc.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/uwb.ko
> ./usr/lib/modules/3.5.3-2-ck/kernel/whci.ko
274,275d273
< ./etc/udev
< ./etc/udev/udev.conf

The ck-modules lead me to try this with a "vanilla" arch kernel which I also have installed. With the default arch kernel I am left in a recovery shell but exiting does not lead to a successful boot. I don't know what this really means, but perhaps something unique to the ck-kernel setup allows a recovery from this problem.

Any suggestions for further troubleshooting or exploration?

edit I put udev back in the hooks array, rebuilt the image, and now it works fine. So udev is the relevant peice of the puzzle. I thought the idea of using the modules, though, was so that udev wouldn't be needed. I must have missed a needed module, though I cant figure what it would be.

edit2 I've used "break=postmount" on both the working image with udev, and with the failing image without udev and I do an "lsmod" in the shell. I get the exact same list of modules. So all the correct modules are all loaded properly. But the absence of udev seems to cause a problem.

Last edited by Trilby (2012-09-01 15:10:14)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-01 14:26:53

[SOLVED] Initramfs trim: "device '/dev/sda3' not fount" still boots.

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