[lug] Still challenging

[David L. Anselmi]

Gary Hodges wrote:
[...]
> I have installed the system and I get to a grub window with menu list.  
> Good so far.  After a bit of the usual boot messages I get:
> 
> pivot_root: No such file or directory
> /sbin/init: 432: cannot open dev/console: No such file
> Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!

Heh.  I had that same error last night.  But that had to do with root on 
LVM and moving an install to a different drive.

When you tell grub to boot Linux, it loads the kernel and mounts a 
ramdisk on root.  Then some hardware setup things happen (like loading 
the necessary drivers to access your disks).  Pivot root is the magic 
that replaces the ramdisk on root with your root device.

This error means that pivot root can't mount anything.  With no root 
mounted everything stops.

I'd have thought that the stock initrd image would have your drivers in 
it (you were able to install, right?) but maybe I've never played with 
such new hardware (though Dell's SC420 works fine with SATA, MD, LVM, 
and all that jazz).  Another possibility is that you got the root device 
configured wrong in grub.

So if you know which driver you need and that you have the right root 
device and that initrd doesn't have it, you can look up how to build 
your own initrd for Debian.

If you can boot the box from Knoppix and see your drive, and if you know 
there's a kernel out there that has a good driver for you, you can mount 
your drive under Knoppix, chroot to it (make sure all your various 
partitions get mounted), and run aptitude (or whatever) to install the 
new kernel package.

HTH, it isn't usually this hard.
Dave