Arch Linux

aCyd

Member

Registered: 2008-03-22

Posts: 7

[SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

Hi!

I recently got an old Pentium III computer as my second PC and decided to try Arch on it. Installation was (after several tries) successful, but only when using ext3 as fs for /. I'd prefer to use jfs but then I'd need to boot from CD... How can I boot with jfs?

Last edited by aCyd (2008-03-23 15:49:10)

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

Which part of the boot process goes wrong? Grub? Kernel? Mounting the root filesystem?

aCyd

Member

Registered: 2008-03-22

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

I think its the mounting root file system. It is "Attempting to create root device '/dev/sda3'" before the error messages:
ERROR: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sda3'
unknown
ERROR: root fs cannot be detected.

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

This probably means that your initcpio does not load the jfs module, and conseqently the kernel does not recognize jfs filesystem on /dev/sda3. You can try explicitly adding 'jfs' into the MODULES array in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, and regenerating initcpios by 'mkinitcpio -p kernel26'.

My root filesystem is jfs, but I have a boot partition, with ext2. But it shouldn't matter, since the only thing read from the boot partition is the kernel and initcpio. From what you say, the boot process gets past loading the kernel and initcpio fine; the error is generated by the script inside initcpio.

aCyd

Member

Registered: 2008-03-22

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

Adding the jfs to MODULES helped but Arch still boots into maintenance shell for failed file system check.

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

And did you check the filesystem then?

aCyd

Member

Registered: 2008-03-22

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED]Unable to boot when using jfs

I tried but couldn't mount /  as instructed.

Now I figured what the other problem was: I read from the Beginners Guide that "all IDE, SATA and SCSI drives have adopted the sdx naming scheme" so I happily named my old IDE disk as sda ... Funny though that I was able to boot to my newly installed system from the CD with
arch root=/dev/sda3

Thanks for help, now I have jfs!