For reasons I can't even recall, my personal gentoo system ended up with an ext3 root filesystem and the other filesystems using reiserfs. For the sake of consistency I decided to switch / to reiserfs. The conversion went smoothly until I attempted to reboot. sysvinit failed with (from handwritten notes): INIT (version number)... /sbin/rc: line 1: /dev/null: Read-only file system /sbin/rc: line 1: /dev/null: Read-only file system /sbin/rc: line 1: /dev/null: Read-only file system Gentoo Linux; http://www.gentoo.org/ Copyright... 7G[ oops ]g /proc... * The "mount" command failed with error: line 1: /dev/null: Read-only file system * Since this is a critical task, startup cannot continue. Give root password for maintenance (or type Control-D for normal startup): By remounting / rw and manually mounting the proc, devfs and tmpfs (/mnt/.init.d) filesystems and starting devfsd, then mounting the remaining unmounted partitions and activating swap I was able to bring the system to a mostly functional state after running /sbin/rc single, then /sbin/rc default. The problem appears to be that /sbin/rc's try() function redirects mount's stdout to /dev/null while the root filesystem is still mounted read-only (even though mount is invoked with the -n option so as not to attempt writing to /etc/mtab on a read-only mounted filesystem). Changing /sbin/rc:17 from: errstr="$((eval $*) 2>&1 >/dev/null)" to: errstr="$(eval $*)" permits successful completion of sysvinit (but outputs junk on the console). Behavior is identical for both kernels: ck-sources 2.4.20-r4 gentoo-sources 2.4.19-r10 Installed baselayout: sys-apps/baselayout 1.8.5.8 $ emerge info Portage 2.0.47-r10 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.2, glibc-2.3.1-r2) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-ck4 i686 Pentium III (Coppermine) GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://mirror.iawnet.sandia.gov/pub/gentoo http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /etc/env.d /etc/postfix /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/usr/var/tmp" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" USE="x86 apm avi encode gif jpeg libg++ mikmod mpeg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell xml2 xmms xv zlib gtkhtml gdbm berkdb tetex svga guile mysql gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl python imlib oggvorbis motif cdr scanner X gtk gnome bonobo kde qt arts esd crypt mmx 3dnow sse cups tcltk opengl sdl dga oss perl readline truetype mozilla java slang -alsa" COMPILER="gcc3" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" MAKEOPTS="-j3" AUTOCLEAN="yes" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" FEATURES="sandbox ccache buildpkg" /etc/fstab: /dev/hda2 /boot ext3 noauto,noatime 0 0 /dev/hda1 / reiserfs noatime,notail 0 1 /dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hda5 /tmp reiserfs noatime,notail 0 1 /dev/hda6 /var reiserfs noatime,notail 0 1 /dev/hda7 /home reiserfs noatime,notail 0 1 /dev/hda8 /usr reiserfs noatime,notail 0 1 /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 user,noauto,ro 0 0 /dev/cdroms/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom2 iso9660 user,noauto,ro 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy msdos user,noauto 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
did you enable reiserfs into you kernel (not as module) ?
Yes, reiserfs support is built in on both kernel builds.
Problem most probably that with the conversion, the device nodes in /dev/ got nuked. You should be able to fix it via one of two ways: 1) add 'devfs=mount' to you kernel parameters 2) boot with kernel parametes 'devfs=nomount init=/bin/bash rw', and then run: # /usr/sbin/MAKEDEV generic-i386 Note that you may have to mount /usr if on diff partition. Option 2 should get your system to a more 'normal' state.
i think this is a duplicate of bug #18057
Martin, Thanks, the problem is solved. For what it's worth, I searched bugzilla and forums before posting this bug, but didn't find any comments that offered a solution. I went with option #2: 2) boot with kernel parameters 'devfs=nomount init=/bin/bash rw', and then run: ... For the benefit of others who might encounter similar problems, before I was able to mount my /usr partition I had to create the device nodes with mknod(1). My /usr is the fourth in the extended partition. I wasn't sure if the /dev/hda inode was required or not, so I created it just to be thorough: mknod /dev/hda b 0 3 0 mknod /dev/hda8 b 0 3 8 It also seems important to mount /proc before running MAKEDEV, since MAKEDEV extracts device information from the /proc tree. mount -t proc none /proc The command to create the default device nodes: cd /dev && /usr/sbin/MAKEDEV generic-i386 It's also worth noting that when booted with init=/bin/bash, bash doesn't print a prompt until the user presses ENTER. post mortem: What confused me about this situation was the devfs documentation, which implies that with devfs there is no longer a need for MAKEDEV. Had I looked more carefully at the situation before the conversion I would have realized that gentoo's sysvinit assumes that there are on-disk device inodes in /dev before mounting the devfs filesystem. It might be helpful to add a note to the gentoo install page (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml) explaining that in the absence of the devfs=mount boot option, the on-disk inodes are still a requirement, perhaps with a link to a page explaining how to create them when necessary.
Glad you got it working. > What confused me about this situation was the devfs documentation, > which implies that with devfs there is no longer a need for > MAKEDEV. Had I looked more carefully at the situation before the > conversion I would have realized that gentoo's sysvinit assumes > that there are on-disk device inodes in /dev before mounting the > devfs filesystem. All Gentoo systems will still have the device nodes, we just want the dependency to be not so great. > It might be helpful to add a note to the gentoo install page > (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml) explaining > that in the absence of the devfs=mount boot option, the on-disk > inodes are still a requirement, perhaps with a link to a page > explaining how to create them when necessary. Right. Can somebody in docs add something like: Please note that you should verify that your (unmounted) /dev is populated with device nodes if you decide not to let the kernel mount devfs, or not to use devfs in general. You can recreate them (be sure that /dev is not mounted) by running: # cd /dev; /usr/sbin/MAKEDEV generic-i386 This is for x86, if you have another arch, you will need to use the command specific to that arch ....
I could see something like this in the unofficial FAQ (wiki). Could someone please add this to the wiki?
