arm filesystem boot problem (solved)

andi_s · Last edited by andi_s on Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:35 am; edited 1 time in total

hello,

i followed this
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml

to install gentoo on my armv5 pda - of course i adjusted the necessary steps for my device.
i used stage3-armv5tel-20101015.tar.bz2
i chrooted from an emdebian system that allready runs on this device, so i know my kernel is working (no modules - everything is build static). as i use haret to boot i have no /boot partition nor did i emerged a kernel (i use my custom kernel 2.6.29 that i use with debian system - this kernel is on vfat partition of the mmc) - as said - with the debian system i have no problems, so it must have something todo with the gentoo system.

my mmc (sd-card) is partitioned this way:

pianosaurus · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 944 Location: Bash$

Hm. The full installation documents has a cp /proc/mounts /etc/mtab step, which should stop boot from complaining. The boot scripts should keep the file updated after that.

Could you try that in maintenance mode and reboot?
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andi_s · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:31 pm Post subject:

hi,

thanks for your reply!

in maintenance mode the filesystem was read-only, so i remounted it with rw and copied mtab to /etc

now the 'missing mtab' message is gone, however the rest of the error message is the same:

fsck.ext2: no such file...

pianosaurus · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 944 Location: Bash$

Does that mean e2fsck is missing, or the device node? I assume the latter, but do an ls /dev just to check.

If the device isn't there, but it's there when you boot debian with the same kernel, I can only see two possibilities:
a) Gentoo's udev rules call the devices something else.
b) You need to probe some kernel modules first, for the mmc interface device. I imagine you'll get a list of candidates by running modprobe -ls | grep mmc. Make sure you copied the modules from the debian system too. They should be in /lib/modules/<kernel-version>/
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andi_s · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:10 pm Post subject:

e2fsck command is available, but "fdisk -l" does not show me any device

to b) : see above - no modules - everything is build static in the kernel (due to haret this is imho the best way)
btw: the kernel shows me during boot: mmc found p1 p2 p3 p4

to a) : i think this may be the case here, how can i check this? just with ls /dev ?

sorry, i must leave now, i will check this tomorrow

pianosaurus · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 944 Location: Bash$

chiefbag · Guru Joined: 01 Oct 2010 Posts: 542 Location: The Kingdom

I have seen this issue on standard installs and it always relates to udev.
If you are seeing this error then the real root and the rest is correct.
I am not familiar with the ARM arch or if you are mounting a physical device or not.
However if you have the ability to mask udev please try the following.

vi /etc/portage/package.mask
>=sys-fs/udev-147

andi_s · Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:34 am Post subject:

it was indeed an udev-related problem!

thanks to both of you for your help! now i can boot into gentoo

however, during boot i get several messages:

pianosaurus · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 944 Location: Bash$

I don't know why you are getting the Unknown HZ error, but it shouldn't be critical. It is written by certain tools, typically if they are too old for the kernel version.

The /init bug is simply because the init process is not located where the default is set up in the kernel. I don't know HaRET, but I assume you can set boot options somewhere? You should add init=/sbin/init to the kernel options.

If there is no such configuration, you can safely ignore it, as it is guessing correctly after the error message anyway.
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andi_s · Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 3:58 pm Post subject:

ok, thanks - yes haret has option to set init - i will try this