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cornplayz256
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2023
Posts: 107
Location: /dev/mmcblk0
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 Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 11:51 am Post subject: Cannot boot: is not a valid block device [solved?] |
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i need help, when i reinstalled my gentoo ayatem to start fresh again, it shows an error saying it is not a valid block device. the kernel im using is built with gen kernel and i have ext4 supoort turned on. running fsck on the root device on the live cd returns no errors. Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Device is a samsung chromebook 4.
Last edited by cornplayz256 on Thu Sep 28, 2023 12:40 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54834
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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cornplayz256,
That "random text" is probably important.
Is it UUID=<string> is not a valid block device?
or unknow-block(x,y) where x and y are important.
A photo on an image hosting site would be good.
How did you run genkernel?
builds you a kernel and initrd. The initrd is a temporary root filesystem in a file.
If that is in use, when the boot process cannot continue, it drops you to a rescue shell, so I suspect that your initrd. is not being loaded or is broken.
That is, you don't get a panic message.
When you createh the grub.cfg file, it should have printed messages about discovering one or more kernels and one or more matching initrd files.
Chromebooks can be a bit odd, but that comes later.
_________________
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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cornplayz256
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2023
Posts: 107
Location: /dev/mmcblk0
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | cornplayz256,
That "random text" is probably important.
Is it UUID=<string> is not a valid block device?
or unknow-block(x,y) where x and y are important.
A photo on an image hosting site would be good.
How did you run genkernel?
builds you a kernel and initrd. The initrd is a temporary root filesystem in a file.
If that is in use, when the boot process cannot continue, it drops you to a rescue shell, so I suspect that your initrd. is not being loaded or is broken.
That is, you don't get a panic message.
When you createh the grub.cfg file, it should have printed messages about discovering one or more kernels and one or more matching initrd files.
Chromebooks can be a bit odd, but that comes later. |
Seems like i have the ext4 option as M. Im rebuilding my kernel now with it being *. I will tell you when its done and it boots.
I ran genkernel with mountboot and menuconfig and install all if youre wondering. |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54834
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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cornplayz256,
Modules can be loaded from the initrd. If You are trying to build a kernel that does dot need an initrd, thats OK and mostly possible.
There are some hints here.
You will need a lot more that ext4 build in.
To boot from emmc, which your Chromebook has, you seeh the mmc stack, the kernel command line parameter, rootdelay=30 to get around the emmc storage being detected asynchronously.
You must not root=UUID= on the kernel command line either, as that needs the user space mount command.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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cornplayz256
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2023
Posts: 107
Location: /dev/mmcblk0
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | cornplayz256,
Modules can be loaded from the initrd. If You are trying to build a kernel that does dot need an initrd, thats OK and mostly possible.
There are some hints here.
You will need a lot more that ext4 build in.
To boot from emmc, which your Chromebook has, you seeh the mmc stack, the kernel command line parameter, rootdelay=30 to get around the emmc storage being detected asynchronously.
You must not root=UUID= on the kernel command line either, as that needs the user space mount command. |
I rebuilt the kernel with some new options and new scsi drivers and its still not working, i added rootdelay=30 and i also added rootfstype=ext4 to the kernel cmd line, still the same message. I tried setting the root to/dev/mmcblk0p3 instead of the uuid and its still not working. If i used a bin kernel, it boots as expected. |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54834
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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cornplayz256,
You need to give us something to work with.
What is the text of the panic message that ends | Quote: | | saying it is not a valid block device. |
. Just that one line.
A photo of the screen would be even better.
We need the output of That can go to a pastebin site or into a post. It tells the hardware in your system.
wgetpaste will put files or command output onto a pastebin and return a URL. You post the URL. Like this. | Code: | $ wgetpaste -c "lspci -nnk"
Your paste can be seen here: https://bpa.st/IJ3Q |
We also need your kernel .config file, to tell you what to change.
That has to go to a pastebin site as its far to big for a post. You may need to choose the 0x0 service.
wgetpaste has a list of services that it knows about.
That information will stop the guesswork and we can just fix it.
A binary kernel works as it provides and uses an initrd. This allows it to work almost anywhere.
Your kernel that you configured yourself is not trying to use an initrd.
This means that you not only need the right options but the difference between loadable module and built in matters for all the options required to mount the root filesystem.
After root is mounted, modules can be loaded for everything else.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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cornplayz256
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2023
Posts: 107
Location: /dev/mmcblk0
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | cornplayz256,
You need to give us something to work with.
What is the text of the panic message that ends | Quote: | | saying it is not a valid block device. |
. Just that one line.
A photo of the screen would be even better.
We need the output of That can go to a pastebin site or into a post. It tells the hardware in your system.
wgetpaste will put files or command output onto a pastebin and return a URL. You post the URL. Like this. | Code: | $ wgetpaste -c "lspci -nnk"
Your paste can be seen here: https://bpa.st/IJ3Q |
We also need your kernel .config file, to tell you what to change.
That has to go to a pastebin site as its far to big for a post. You may need to choose the 0x0 service.
wgetpaste has a list of services that it knows about.
That information will stop the guesswork and we can just fix it.
A binary kernel works as it provides and uses an initrd. This allows it to work almost anywhere.
Your kernel that you configured yourself is not trying to use an initrd.
This means that you not only need the right options but the difference between loadable module and built in matters for all the options required to mount the root filesystem.
After root is mounted, modules can be loaded for everything else. |
sorry, im reinstalling gentoo but for now im gonna use a bin kernel. since im fine with the default kernel config options in the bin kernel right now.
though next time im using genkernel and it fails to boot, i might send the info to you. |
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stefan11111
l33t
Joined: 29 Jan 2023
Posts: 951
Location: Romania
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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| cornplayz256 wrote: |
sorry, im reinstalling gentoo but for now im gonna use a bin kernel. since im fine with the default kernel config options in the bin kernel right now.
though next time im using genkernel and it fails to boot, i might send the info to you. |
Reinstalling gentoo seems like a lot of work to fix a broken kernel.
_________________
My overlay: https://github.com/stefan11111/stefan_overlay
INSTALL_MASK="/etc/systemd /lib/systemd /usr/lib/systemd /usr/lib/modules-load.d *udev* /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d *tmpfiles* /var/lib/dbus /usr/bin/gdbus /lib/udev" |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54834
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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cornplayz256,
It's fine to have a selection of kernels in the grub menu.
That means yo always have one that works.
Gentoo is no a binary distro. There is no need to reinstall anything to fix it.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Zucca
Moderator
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3939
Location: Rasi, Finland
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| Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2023 11:44 am Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | no need to reinstall |
Exactly.
One is bound to be made the same mistakes upon reinstalling or accidentally doing the correct choices and never learning what did wrong.
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..: Zucca :..
| My gentoo installs: | init=/sbin/openrc-init
-systemd -logind -elogind seatd |
| Quote: | | I am NaN! I am a man! |
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cornplayz256
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2023
Posts: 107
Location: /dev/mmcblk0
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| Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2023 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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returning to this thread, since i will try to use genkernel again, i enabled mmc support in the kernel built in (*) because my internal storage is a mmc disk,but that does not seem to help, it still says not a valid block device. im using genfstab to generate the fstab.
here is what i tried which failed:
appending rootfstype=ext4 to kernel params
doing root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 instead of uuid
i also enabled gpt support built in. which did not solve the problem at all
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cornplayz256
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Jun 2023
Posts: 107
Location: /dev/mmcblk0
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| Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2023 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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it seems like the crappy genkernel initramfs having no support for emmc devices. i used dracut and it seemed to boot now. weird.
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grknight
Retired Dev
Joined: 20 Feb 2015
Posts: 2005
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| Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2023 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| cornplayz256 wrote: | | it seems like the crappy genkernel initramfs having no support for emmc devices. i used dracut and it seemed to boot now. weird. |
Not really. Initramfs expect the root device to be enumerated by the kernel by a certain point in their script.
Some devices take longer to do so including USB and MMC.
Genkernel's, by default, looks for a root device, then waits 1 second and retries up to 5 seconds. This also assumes that any LVM/crypt/RAID is already discovered by this point.
dracut's, by default, waits forever for devices with a retry of 180 seconds.
Genkernel initramfs can be told to wait more using kernel command-line options scandelay=<seconds> (for before LVM/crypt/RAID checks) and/or rootdelay=<seconds> for more retry seconds. |
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