"not a valid root device"(solved)

hazle · n00b Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 19

my hard drive uses sda instead of hda. every thing works perfectly intill i reboot and choose gentoo. then the consol says
"Block device /dev/sda7 is not a valid root device. the root block device is unspecified or not detected". i have triple checked my lilo.conf file. if your wondering i have a maxtor 250 gig hard drive. thanks in advance to those who help

d0nju4n · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 5:21 am Post subject:

Double check that your specific file systems are compiled in your kernel, and that they are _not_ compiled as modules
_________________
Linux User 355087

hazle · n00b Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 19

i used the genkernel. how can i change it so it works?

amzuk · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 5:39 am Post subject:

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 7:41 am Post subject:

You said you used genkernel, mind showing us your lilo.conf file? Perhaps you used the non-genkernel one...

Letharion · Veteran Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 1344 Location: Sweden

I guess I have the same problem. After grub, what I guess is the kernel gets going (I do understand more or less what the kernal does, but I'm not certain at what point it takes over)
At
>> Mounting filesystems
>> Determining root device...
>> Block device /dev/hda4 is not a valid root device...
>> The root block device is unspecified or not detected.
Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell...

I don't know what would make it "valid" I have followed the x86 instructions more or less to the letter (or so I thought)
The only difference is that I have some pre-installed image on /dev/hda1 that choose not to remove, so hda1 became hda2 in the examples.

I too used genkernel --menuconfig all (but I didn't quite understand what the difference was?)
The filesystem on hda4 is reiserfs, and I have built-in support for it in the kernel.

Checking my config file it looks like this where reiser comes in
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_CHECK=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_PROC_INFO=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS_XATTR=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_SECURITY=y

Is that enough?

Ravenfeather · n00b Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 32

Nope, it ain't enough. Your kernel must support the kind of bus system your drive is connected to, too. hm. None of the features you checked about reiserfs was experimental or something, it it?

What kind of drive is it you have?
IDE/ATAPI, SCSI or SATA? To me it sounds like the kernel couldn't build up the connection to the drive when trying to mount the root device...

Oh, and what exactly is the parameters you give to the kernel. I mean, when you load the kernel, what do you tell it what the filesystem root was?
Like:

/linux-2.6.11-gentoo-r9 root=/dev/hdc3
in my case.. it is from my frub configuration, but there must be something similiar in lilo.
_________________
One Tux to find them all...
(replaced once my brain is capable of actual thinking again) ;-)

Letharion · Veteran Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 1344 Location: Sweden

No, none of the reiserfs choices are expermental.
It's IDE, (on a laptop, and I guess laptop hardware can be special, but it's IDE)

Here's my entire grub.conf
---
default 0
timeout 20
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpx.gz <---(Which btw doesn't seem to work, if that provides a lead)

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.11-rc3
root (hd0,1)
kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r3 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hda4 udev vga=0x317
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-gentoo-r3
---
Hopefully that to the letter, but misspellings can be hard to notice sometimes.

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 9:40 am Post subject:

Can you add "doscsi" on your kernel line and try with that? So, just like you have "udev" on that line, add "doscsi".

You can do that through GRUB itself; boot your system, select the linux entry, press e, go to the kernel line, press e, add doscsi, press enter, press b.

If that works, update your grub.conf to have this permanently.

Letharion · Veteran Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 1344 Location: Sweden

Unforunately, it didn't make any difference.
Another odd thing about grub (except the splashscreen) is that I don't get to the menu at all, as if timeout was 0. Could I have done something wrong with grub itself?
I had to add the parameter to the grub.conf and try that. Didn't work anyway.
Just to be certain I did i correctly, the line looked like this.

kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r3 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hda4 udev doscsi vga=0x317

Letharion · Veteran Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 1344 Location: Sweden

Sry, turns out it was a user problem as always afterall.
I was browsing around and saw "you used genkernel but didn't do udev"
and I thought, "Did I do that?"
Probably I didn't, cause I tried it again, and now Gentoo boots properly.

hazle · n00b Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 19

my lilo.conf reads as follows:

amzuk · Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 5:44 am Post subject:

and show what

adir · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 4 Location: Haifa, Israel

Hi all,

I just had the same problem, when I installed someone Gentoo on her laptop, and wanted to use Genkernel. I looked for a solution and I found that we have the same problems.

Unfortunately, Genkernel does not provide all the necessary pseudo filesystems. If you want to use genkernel, do:

amzuk · Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 9:11 pm Post subject:

i dont use neither, and mine works perfectly too &) guess u just fogot smthing first time you configured it.
you dont need /dev/pts Extended Attributes, /dev/pts Security Labels, tmpfs Extended Attributes, tmpfs Security Labels too boot normaly
_________________
When your problem is resolved, put [SOLVED] in the topic.