Bug 79659 – upgrading to linux-2.6: problems with udev

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Pablo De Nápoli 2005-01-26 18:26:17 UTC]

I've upgraded to the linux-2.6.10 (following the instructions in the migration guidehttp://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/migration-to-2.6.xml, ), but I was unable to boot with the new kernel. It complained about non-existent /dev/null device
This problem arises when mounting ramfs in /dev (line 187 in /sbin/rc), and
when uncompressing the devices.tar.bz2 tarball (line 193 in /sbin/rc)

However, I have checked that

- the devices /dev/null and /dev/console do exists in my hard disk

- The kernel has no suppor for devfs (CONFIG_DEVFS_FS is not set)

- I'm passing the option "udev" to the kernel (i.e. append = "udev" in Lilo)

I have solved this problem by doing the following,

- adding the lines (from the migration guide)

 mknod -m 660  /dev/console c 5 1
 mknod -m 660  /dev/null c 1 3

for creating the two critical devices after mounting /dev acording to the
patch I'm submitting
(I strongly suggest that you incorporate this to /sbin/rc, as it is a 
fail-safe solution)

- setting 

RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no"

in /etc/conf.d/rc (so that the tar command is not excecuted)
What seems strange to me is that the file

/lib/udev-state/devices.tar.bz2

has zero length (this may be a cause of the problem)

I've found more problems when migrating but I'll report them in a separated
bug report since they are not related to baselayout

I'm using baselayout-1.9.4-r6

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

[Comment 1 Pablo De Nápoli 2005-01-26 18:30:37 UTC]

Created attachment 49625 [details, diff]
patch for /sbin/rc for creating critical devices 

This patch to /sbin/rc adds two lines for creating the two devices that are
critical to boot

[Comment 2 SpanKY 2005-01-28 22:18:32 UTC]

been fixed long ago in unstable baselayout

[Comment 3 Pablo De Nápoli 2005-01-29 05:09:20 UTC]

Then please tell the users to upgrade to the unstable baselayout before upgrading to the new kernel (in the migration guide), or better make it the
stable one as soon as posible. 

This is important since in the last  Gentoo Linux Newletter (January 24, 2005) users are encouraged to migrate to the new kernel.

I think it is not acceptable to have a stable baselayout with such a critical bug (that won't let the system boot).

It took me a whole day to find out what was happening and debug /sbin/rc, I think that the same could happend to other users that wish to upgrade to the
new kernel.