Arch Linux

ScriptDevil

Member

From: In Front of My PC

Registered: 2006-04-06

Posts: 253

Root partition not found. Attempting to create it

Well.. The subject says it all.
I installed an Arch 64 from the ftp installer.. So logically I should have had the latest packages. Installer ran smoothly just like the i686 installer. Great
I installed grub into the root partition because I dual boot it with my Arch 32 box.

Once that was over, i chainloaded the new grub from the 32 bit one. Good.. Next i was able to log in as root. I needed those nvidia drivers. So I installed them. It asked for some 10 new updates and installs and one among them was kernel 26 2.6.24-4.
I installed them all. But sadly after that it complained that [keymap] existed in the filesystem. Without giving it a second thought, I did a pacman -Sf and reinstalled the kernel.
The next reboot onwards, I got this error message while booting into arch64

/dev/sdb9 not found: Attempting to create it
<Some other messages relating to that line>
$ramfs

I was confused.. And I chrooted to the partition using the rescue cd's kernel. It went smooth. So I suppose I screwed up with the kernel. What do I do now? Also my 32 bit arch is my main OS. It has got 2.6.24-4 in the list of updates. Am nervous to upgrade atm. But is there any workaround for this mess?

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Be yourself, because you are all that you can be

Demind

Member

Registered: 2007-07-10

Posts: 111

Re: Root partition not found. Attempting to create it

Which kind of hard disk do you have?
I one experienced a problem like that when i misconfigured the mkinitcpio.conf not including ata_piix and ata_generici as modules to be included in the kernel26.img.
I had a IDE HD...
Maybe with the last upgrade of mkinitcpio (i've noticed i.e. that the modules i wrote two lines upper are not included in teh new mkinitcpio.conf) you have some kind of problem and the fact that with the kernel of the rescue cd solved your problem seems to confirm this point.
It's only an aidea obviously...

hardfalcon

Member

From: Luxembourg

Registered: 2008-04-13

Posts: 8

Website

Re: Root partition not found. Attempting to create it

Please post your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Nicky726

Member

From: Czech Republic

Registered: 2008-02-15

Posts: 146

Re: Root partition not found. Attempting to create it

If you still have that problem try this:
Boot from any live cd (or other linux at your hdd) and mount your partition with root to /mnt/whatever
In /etc/rc.conf set KEYMAP to "us" and CONSOLEFONT to ""
chroot /mnt/whatever and run mkinitcpio -p kernel26
after that you should be able to boot your arch and pacman -Syu it (there should be newer mkinitcpio package in repo, the old one is probably beyond this problem)

this worked for me, when i had this problem

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"Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to."

hardfalcon

Member

From: Luxembourg

Registered: 2008-04-13

Posts: 8

Website

Re: Root partition not found. Attempting to create it

Nicky726: The kernel doesn't care at all which keymap or console font it should use if it isn't able to access the harddisk and mount the root partition...

@Demind: Check your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and exchange all "ide" hooks with "pata" hooks (or vice versa, don't remember anymore which way round it was, but I was having exactly the same problem in here). If you are using an onboard RAID controller, also make sure dmraid is installed and the dmraid hook is activated in your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.

Good luck

Nicky726

Member

From: Czech Republic

Registered: 2008-02-15

Posts: 146

Re: Root partition not found. Attempting to create it

Guess than, changing keymap was unnecessary, nevertheless the problem was solved with runing mkinintcpio, as i posted.

---

"Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to."