System hangs on '* Mounting proc at /proc...'

lucasjb

Hi All,

I've had a nicely working Gentoo system for about a year now, but a recent emerge -u world has left it unbootable. Here's the last few lines from the boot sequence:

Angrybob · Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Posts: 575

so you've used the livecd... did you look at the system logs? they might tell you something

lucasjb · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 12:59 am Post subject:

Thanks Angrybob,

Yeah I've booted with the LiveCD. Interesting (scarily) Knoppix 3.2 won't boot on my machine, it hangs right after the little framebuffer penguin is displayed... LiveCD works though. Knoppix may be having trouble with my hardware, although it's really not that exotic (Asus A7N8X Deluxe), but I do have to boot LiveCD with gentoo nonet.

My system logs aren't really informative. I found some stuff in /var/log/everything and /var/log/critical but nothing interesting, just reporting ADSL connections and GNOME bugs and things. I have no /var/log/syslog or /var/log/kernl.log or /var/log/messages. My Debian box has a whole bunch of useful logs in /var/log --- I know that the Gentoo install covers the logging daemon but mine isn't working very hard

. Once I get this box back up I'll be looking to get some more comprehensive logging going.

More ideas anyone?

--
Lucas

Angrybob · Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Posts: 575

did you recently change the kernel, if so change it back, or recompile it. have a look at your config files in /etc, maybe your devfs config files have got screwed up...

lucasjb · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:04 am Post subject:

Thanks again Angrybob,

No I haven't installed a new kernel since I got this one working many months ago (I'm still running gaming-sources-r1, I haven't upgraded since that came out). /etc/devfsd.conf is intact and looks OK, but /etc/devfs.d/ is empty --- is this normal?

--
Lucas

lucasjb · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 3:31 am Post subject: Adendum

Hiyas,

Just a couple more things, Knoppix will boot it just takes ages while it waits for a response from the onboard SATA RAID controller. The other thing is that I found a thread similar to mine about spurious interrupt 8259A and not being able to mount /proc on boot. I'm also seeing the odd spurious interrupt 8259A... I've read that it's harmless but perhaps there is a connection?

--
Lucas

lucasjb · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 3:52 am Post subject:

Hi,

Well partial success, I've managed to get a booting system going by re-compiling my kernel from a chroot environment. I'm now on gaming-sources-2.4.20-r6... but I have the following problem, depmod -a gives:

Angrybob · Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Posts: 575

Yeah I remember getting loads of unresolved symbols with 2.4 kernels... just play with the options until it works. I'm using 2.6 now and its never done anything like that yet

Fluffy` · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 54

On a machine in my home I forgot to mount proc before bootstrap. When I rebooted that machine it stopped there, didn't mount proc.

Maby this little info helps? I have no idea what your problem is.

lucasjb · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 9:41 am Post subject: Resolved

Hi,

Thanks again Angrybob and Fluffy`, well I simply deleted all my kernel images from /boot and all my modules directories from /lib/modules and recompiled and reinstalled the kernel and problems solved. I guess I must have been making a mistake in my kernel installation procedure. Anyway, all fixed now, basically I had to recompile the kernel. I wouldn't mind knowing what caused these problems in the first place... but as long as it doesn't happen again, who cares?

Thanks again,

--
Lucas

damianfrancis · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Aug 2003 Posts: 120

I seem to be having the same problem. I built the system and when I rebooted I did not have networking so I changed several things in my kernel trying to get my networking up. But it just would not work, so I installed a bunch of packages from the 2nd cd among them we binutils, lame, libvorbis, mpg123, alsa, xchat, xmms, when I rebooted it would not finish the boot it just hung on mounting /proc. I used the livecd to emerge sync and install the 2.6 kernel and update world. I have rebooted and it is still locking on mounting /proc. The only minor success I have had is when I cleaned out everything kernel related from /boot and /usr/src then emerged the 2.6 kernel sources, then I built a kernel with make menueconfig and I built everything into the kernel no modules. When I rebooted I saw the mounting /proc and then it gave me two more lines before freezing. They had to do with my usb keyboard and not finding the modules. So I thought well if you want modules I shall give them to you /proc. So I chrooted into my install and built another kernel compiling the drivers for my usb HID keyboard as modules then I rebooted. It still was freezing. Then I thought maybe the problem is hotplug so I emerge -C hotplug and took it out of the default runlevel, rebooted, and now I was not even seeing the two lines about the keyboard, it is just freezing when it says mounting /proc. I am really frustrated and would like some advise on how to make this darn thing work. Any ideas?
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lucasjb · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 4:26 am Post subject:

Hi damianfrancis,

Well you probably don't want to hear this, but you could downgrade to a 2.4 series kernel... :wink:

I think the next service to start after mounting proc is devfsd. Perhaps you should check your kernel configuration to make sure devfsd is included (unless you're going with udev, in which case...

).

Apart from that, I can't really offer anything. As I mentioned in my posts, I never actually figured out why the problem existed or why a kernel recompile fixed it, so I'm really none the wiser myself.

HTH,

--
Lucas

jstelly · n00b Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 70

I saw this problem on my box after setting up gentoo, I had made a stupid mistake, I never created /proc on my root fs. I'd find it odd that an update would delete /proc, but I guess it couldn't hurt to check.

Dinini · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2003 Posts: 236

My Asus A7N8X Deluxe is the only machine I don't have running gentoo on. I've had no luck at all with the LiveCDs

jstelly · n00b Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 70

I couldn't get the LiveCD to boot on my Asus A7S333. I tried every different kernel and option (nofb, etc) but I just got a blank screen after it loaded the kernel every time.