Boot problem

ex0 · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 12:58 pm Post subject: Boot problem

Hey, I'm not sure if this fits into the installation forums or what, but the problem is probably to do with me doing something wrong during installation.

I just installed Gentoo for the first time and when I go to boot it from grub (I'm running a duel boot with XP) the screen goes black then goes back to the Grub screen, so I thought to check my the boot commands thingy for Gentoo Linux, I highlighted "Gentoo Linux" and pressed e to edit and notice theres only one line there:

root (hd1,0)

so pressed o to 'open' a new line under the first one and added what I thought should be therre:

kernel (hd1,0)/boot/bzImage root=/dev/hdb1

After adding theis line in I proceeded to highlight it and press 'b' in order to boot using the line...

Even tho I didn't know what I was doing and guessed that the above steps may result in a 0.1% chance of it actually booting it did actually proceed to boot.

Then It starts through what I assume are the normal lines that are displayed upon booting and after about 50 lines or so it stops, these are about the last 8 lines before it stops (didn't look like there were any errors before this):

ds: no sockets loaded
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly
mount_devfs_fs(): unable to mount devfs, err:-2
Freeing unused kernel memory: 136k freed
Warning: unable to open an initial console
kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init = option to kernal

When I reboot I can boot up windows fine from Grub, however I need to go through the same steps as above in order for linux to boot at all.

I'm not sure whether I'm completley off track here or what, maybe I should go through the whole installation process again but It took so damn long...

Is there a way I can get into config files or something so I can check if I made any mistakes?

some please help me!

Diezel · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 1:15 pm Post subject:

I had the same problem once when I typed the /root wrong. Could you post your fdisk print.
Dont reinstall yet. There is probably not a big problem here.
Boot from the Install CD again and
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/gentoo/
mount -t proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
and
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
and
env-update

Then you can modify whatever is wrong.
But do post your partition table. And it is possible that you kernel isn't Ok. But compiling a kernel is alot faster than building a system

I'll wait for some more info here.
Have fun.
Oh and one more thing, did you make a /boot partition or is everything on the /root partition?
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ex0 · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 1:45 pm Post subject:

havn't got much time to test anything out or anything... I'll try more tomorrow (its night time here right now)

heres the partition table of hdb (didn't know how else to show it other than copy it out...)

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 16 128488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 17 6 23 4875727+ 83 Linux

no time to show you hda's fdsik table at the moment but all it has to do with linux is the swap patrition on hda7

I'll reply and read replys tomorrow...

cheers

ex0 · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 1:45 pm Post subject:

oh yeh I have a /boot partition...

ex0 · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 3:20 pm Post subject:

oh yeh, this might help

when editing my /etc/fstab file I wasn't sure what to put ofr the 'dump/pass' option, so my boot I had 1 1 and everything else is 0 0 (I left it all how it was...)

ex0 · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 1:33 am Post subject:

I got up this mounring and recompiled the kernel checking everything in the menuconfig was selected as the installation guide specefies, I noticed that the processor was set as intel (they didn't mention this in the installation guide), I changed this to athlon-xp family, recompiled the kernel.

Rebooted and I'm getting exacltly the same thing happening...

cyrillic · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 2:15 am Post subject:

Try changing your kernel line to this :

ex0 · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 2:28 am Post subject:

I just did that and it worked!!! please explain to my why

however, now I am onto another problem, how can I get up GUI desktops, KDE and GNOME?

ex0 · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 2:51 am Post subject:

ah, I just found the desktop configuration guide so I should be set now.

Thank you so much cyrillic!

cyrillic · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:11 am Post subject:

The correct "root" for your system would look like :

ex0 · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 11:27 am Post subject:

yeh I just realised what I was doing, I'm a bit slow hey, ahah

just trying to emerge kde right now, its taken 4 hours so far, how much longer you recon?

(I'm running Athlon-xp 2gHz, 512ram)