cannot mount tmpfs on boot

shook · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 18

i get done setting stuff up and i can't seem to get past my first boot. the tmpfs is refusing to mount (wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on tempfs, or too many mounted filesytems). does this have something to do with my /etc/fstab setup?
here is my /etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.10
# 2002/11/18 19:39:22 azarah Exp $
#
# noatime turns of atimes for increased performance (atimes normally
# aren't
# needed; notail increases performance of ReiserFS (at the expense of
# storage
# efficiency). It's safe to drop the noatime options if you want and to
# switch between notail and tail freely.

# <fs> <mountpoint> <type> <opts> <dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.

/dev/hda2 /boot ext3 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/hda3 / ext3 noatime 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink). Adding the following
# line to /etc/fstab should take care of this:
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will use
# almost no
# memory if not populated with files)

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

any ideas or other information that is needed?

bsolar · Bodhisattva Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 2764

Have you enabled ramdisk in your kernel?
_________________
I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

Woland · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2003 10:37 pm Post subject:

Your /etc/fstab does not mount /dev/fs, your kernel does. When you compile your kernel, in the filesystems menu, make sure that you select "mount devfs on boot" where you compile in devfs support.

I imagine you might already have it mounted. Run the 'mount' command by itself and look for

saint_abroad · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 53 Location: England, UK

shook · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 18

all right. i enabled RAM disk and recompiled the kernel. i forgot that /boot is on a separate partition but i got that fixed. i enabled ramdisk support. devfs is enabled and mounts at boot according the kernel config. the fstab is correct. swap is hda5 and that is according to cfdisk. hda1 is windows, hda2 grub, hda3 root, hda5 swap, hda6 fat32 to share between windows and linux. you can't have an hda4 if you have logical partitions. a drive only supports 4 primary partitions etc. anyways, i'm still having the same old problem. any ideas here? i'd think it would be a bad option or fs type in the mounting process done by a script that i don't know about. any other ideas? what should i do from here?

Woland · Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2003 7:22 am Post subject:

How far are you getting in your booting process? Are you going all the way to a log-in prompt, has init started (you will see the bunch of Starting....[OK] things like that.) Or is it the kernel itself that is freaking out? Please post the error messages when you try to boot. If you can get all the way to the login prompt, log in, then run dmesg > ~/dmesg.txt and then look at the file (less dmesg.txt) for problems.

However, if you are getting to a prompt, or even if init is starting but choking when trying to mount file systems, I strongly suspect that the problem is that you still have that devfs line in your /etc/fstab file. Try commenting that out. Please post the results, and maybe we can solve this.

BTW, with all due respects to bsolar, you really don't need RAMdisk support. So if you are going to recompile your kernel and want to free that last bit of RAM, leave it out. If you are through messing with your kernel, don't worry about it--it shouldn't hurt anything.

shook · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 18

init starts and then chokes at 3rd or 2nd line. i can't remember. when tmpfs is mounted at /mnt/.initd i believe that's where it is trying to mount. the location exists so that's not a problem. also i have commented out the tmpfs lines and with or without them i get the same result. i get an emergency login prompt when init chokes though so i logged in and checked out 'mount'. it says that the tmpfs is already mounted at /mnt/.initd and devfs is already mounted.

what's going on here? how can i prevent init from trying to mount a tmpfs at that point twice? that would be my solution.

TheDauthi · n00b Joined: 10 Oct 2002 Posts: 17

I'm getting the same problem, however, mine's not on a fresh install, but on an install of the new dev kernel. I can still boot up the old kernel just fine, though. I looked around a bit, and when I boot to the newer kernel, I'm not getting a /dev/shm... or many of the other things that devfs is supposed to make for me (scsi, sound, loop directories, etc).
ps shows that devfsd is running. It's just not doing anything. Any ideas?

bsolar · Bodhisattva Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 2764

TheDauthi · n00b Joined: 10 Oct 2002 Posts: 17

1.3.25-r2, for me. Everything is from the ~x86 tree.

shook · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 18

solved my problem. i apparently overlooked the virtual memory filesystem in the kernel configuration. so if anyone seems to have this problem make sure you check that part of the kernel configuration.

Woland · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2003 12:09 am Post subject:

Makes sence---devfs is a virtual file system after all; but I never thought that this would be a problem, because I just always enable virtual file system as part of that mysterious thing calles POSIX comliance.

Glad you solved your problem, and thanks for teaching me something new.

Now don't you just feel so much closer to your new Gentoo system?