TMPFS mount error

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

The following is the message I get when trying to boot up Gentoo 1.2, having installed with stage3. I'm booting the machine using LILO with Slackware on another partition. I only have one partition for Gentoo. Kernel is compiled with virtual memory filesystem (tmpfs), device file system. So I have no idea. Is it not possible to skip this step?

And if this looks familiar it's because I started a thread about it yesterday... it's still not resolved. Any ideas?

---
Mounting tmpfs at /mnt/.init.d...
The mount command failed with error:

wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on tmpfs,
or too many mounted filesystems

Since this is a critical task, startup cannot
continue[/i]
_________________
Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11

delta407 · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2002 3:52 pm Post subject:

What kernel are you running...?

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

Just the plain sources that came with Gentoo 1.2 - 2.4.19 I believe... using a configuration that works with Slackware and has the tmpfs and all that.
_________________
Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11

delta407 · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2002 7:52 pm Post subject:

Due to number of reports, bug 3904 has been filed on this issue.

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

I went through the whole deal setting the system up from stage 1. Still it wouln't mount tmpfs on init.d (or anywhere else either). If I comment the checking in /sbin/rc then the system starts fine (except tmpfs isn't mounted ofcourse).

This lead me to think there might be due to some kernel option missing - but I know I have the virtual file system and the dev file system compiled in. However no /dev/shm is created - which should happen according to the documentation with the kernel. That might be an issue. I only have a vague idea of what these systems do and how they behaved so me troubleshooting them is more guessing than anything. /proc mounts fine and proc/filesystems show 'nodev tmpfs' but no 'shm'... I'm not sure if that should show up there either.

Then... The solution !!!
But there is something weird still going on! I had UNIX98 PTY support enabled, recompiling the kernel without it made the system boot!! Even after having uncommented the checking in /sbin/rc. And after having rebooted the /dev/shm was present (seems it's not when pty support is enabled?!)

THE WEIRD PART: It still complains when /etc/init.d/checkroot tries to mount tmpfs at init.d because it has already been done in /sbin/rc !? Seems the startup scripts tries to mount it twice!? Both these scrips are checking bootoptions for notmpfs and proceed to mount tmpfs is the flag is not set. Strange? I think so. I hope somebody has an explanation for me - because I"m curious what's really going on.
_________________
Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11

ColdPack · n00b Joined: 19 Jun 2002 Posts: 60 Location: Madison, WI

Hey there.
After installing gentoo 1.2 (with stage2 and stage3 tarballs from disk) i couldn't boot up the system. It would hang when trying to mount TMPFS. The error message said the same thing as what you quoted above.
And yes, tmpfs and all that stuff was compiled in my new kernel.
After visiting the #gentoo irc, "andee" gave me a possible solution which did, indeed, work.
I recompiled the kernel again using my same .config (I saved it elsewhere) but did "make mrproper" first!! (If you don't save that .config somewhere other than in /usr/src/linux, make mrproper will delete it.)
Then I went on to "make menuconfig", then "make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install".
I rebooted and it worked just fine!

Give it a shot.
CP

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

But it did unfortunatly don't work for me.

Other than that... When the /sbin/rc file mounts the tmpfs on /mnt/init.d with the -n options (which prevents writing in /etc/mtab) and then /etc/init.d/checkroot 'mounts' it again with the -f option (which not actually mounts tmpfs only writes to the /etc/mtab after the root filesystem has been remounted read-write after checking).

I have LILO mount the root filesystem with read-write initially otherwise I get a lot of complaints. But in either case I get the error mentioned in the initial posts when /sbin/rc does the mounting. But now it doesn't freeze - for some reason (I might have screwed up some of the scripts). And mount says that tmpfs is mounted... which it's probably not it's only the mount with the -f option that wrote to /etc/mtab

There is nothing particular with my box and since most other seems to fare well with Gentoo I suspect it's a kernel issue... a conflicting option or something. When I had Unix98 ptys enabled in the kernel that's when it froze during setup and promped for maintenance password... Shouldn't be anything particular with my kernel options either though...

This is annoying. More suggestions are welcome...I'm all out now.
_________________
Ole Johansen
GPG keyID 7353806D 1999-10-11

Guest · Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2002 6:04 pm Post subject: Working allright now.

You know what I did? I didn't copy the old kernel .config into the tree like I've always done. But instead did the make mrproper and copied all my settings from the .config file (doing make menuconfig on another terminal on my old Slackware partition). And then compiled the kernel anew... so I guess the whole thing was a kernel issue... sorry to have bothered y'all. And thanx for the mrproper tip.

Never was a problem copying that .config file into the kernel tree before though... Guess I should stop doing that. Only time I didn't do that was between kernel 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4... Weird. I'm happy - it's all good. I'll be exploring this Gentoo thing now (already got Gnome2 running on it and with the truetype fonts that looks kickass!!!). Then we'll see if Gentoo makes me quit my Slack habit... (I don't think so - but it'll be interesting learning about Gentoo though). Blah, I always ramble when I get tired...

Azarah · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 81

Can we then officially say the problem was kernel config problems?

Btw, I did post it to the bugreport, but will just say it here
as well. If you have issues with tmpfs, you should be able
to use ramfs ... just add "gentoo=notmpfs" to your
kernel parameters in grub or lilo config files (without the
quotes of course).

sinistre · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Norway

Azarah · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 81

Glad to hear it is fixed then

maarten · n00b Joined: 09 Jul 2002 Posts: 1

Well,

I am relativly new to linux and downloaded gentoo this weekend and followed the instructions but end up with the same message when booting (wrong fs, bad option, bad superblock or too many etc. mounting tmpfs at /mnt/.init.d...).

I tried all these hints and followed the instructions given with bug 3904:

first
passing gentoo=notmpfs to the kernel did not help

then I tried to recompile the kernel (yes, did make mrproper), unselected the UNIX 98 pty thing (which indeed was selected the first time I compiled the kernel). I am using the 2.4.18-xfs kernel sources from gentoo.

/dev/hda3 is /boot ext2
/dev/hdc6 is swap
/dev/hdc7 is / xfs

Could anyone give me some more hints on how to proceed and make it work?

Many thanks,
Maarten