Arch Linux

Darkfire Fox

Member

From: California

Registered: 2009-09-01

Posts: 14

[Solved] System cannot find inittab at boot

I just installed a fresh, brand-new Arch 64-bit install on an older PC, but on reboot, Arch can't find the "inittab" file.
Specifically, I get this error:

INIT: no inittab file found
Enter runlevel:

And whether I enter init 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, or whatever, it always replys:

INIT: Entering runlevel x
INIT: No processes left in this runlevel

In my Ubuntu 9.04 CD, I can clearly see that "inittab" exists in /etc and I can open it and read it.  So why can't Arch find it?  I didn't have this problem on my previous installation.

Since I don't know what info you guys need in order to aid me, I'll simply note a few things:

#1) My filesystem

sda5        /               ext4               10.0 GiB
sda6        /boot         ext2                1.0 GiB
sda7        /etc           ext4                1.0 GiB
sda8        /home       ext4             130.0 GiB
sda9        /tmp          ext4              10.0 GiB
sda10      /usr           ext4              20.0 GiB
sda11      /var          ext4              10.0 GiB
sda12      swap      linux-swap          4.7 GiB

#2) Hardware

Gateway GE614 desktop tower
MSI-6741 motherboard
AMD Athlon64 Processor 3400+ (single-core @ 2.3 GHz)
2 GiB DDR ram
Sapphire ATi RadeonHD 3650

#3) GRUB

Grub's root is defined as "hda (0,5)" which I believe is referring to sda6, or /boot

Last edited by Darkfire Fox (2009-10-21 21:10:56)

Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 1,175

Re: [Solved] System cannot find inittab at boot

You have the same problem that was reported here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 64#p640464

It might be caused by /etc being on a separate drive. I guess not all partitions are mounted when init tries to load the inittab. Maybe copying the inittab from sda7 to sda5/etc/ fixes it?

grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: [Solved] System cannot find inittab at boot

What is the purpose of the /etc partition? I would get rid of it and copy its contents into /

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Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: [Solved] System cannot find inittab at boot

To my knowledge, and according to all the FHS docs I have read, /etc must be on the same partition as /.

..directories essential for booting are: '/bin', '/dev', '/etc', '/lib', '/proc' and '/sbin'. Therefore, they must not reside on a separate partition from /.

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IBM PCjr restomod
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Sauengard

Surgat_

Member

Registered: 2007-08-08

Posts: 317

Re: [Solved] System cannot find inittab at boot

If /etc is on a separate partition, nothing will be mounted since /etc/fstab is unreachable!

Darkfire Fox

Member

From: California

Registered: 2009-09-01

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] System cannot find inittab at boot

D'oh!

I see my error now.  I'll have to modify my filesystem.  But still, why does the Arch installer allow you to select /etc as a mount point if it will cause so much trouble?  /usr and /var had to be specified under "custom mount point", but /etc was actually selectable from the list. Oh well, I'll just avoid it from now on.

Solved.

Last edited by Darkfire Fox (2009-10-21 21:10:22)