Problem trying to boot after install

[aratis]

I have finished most of the install process, and was booting up for the first time, and I get this

Gentoo initrd startup.....
STEP 1: Command-line parsing
STEP 2: Module loading
-----Scanning for sbp2...no such module loaded
STEP 3: Mounting necessary filesystems per boot options
Started device management daemon v1.3.25 for /dev
STEP 4: Determining root device
STEP 4a: Mounting root
mount: Mounting /dev/hda4 on /newroot failed: Invalid argument
Could not mount specified ROOT, try again
Root block device unspecified or not detected.
Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell.




I have tried doing the install twice now, both times ending in the same result. First time i used the gentoo-sources for the 2.4 kernel and genkernel install, second time i tried the gaming-sources 2.4.20 kernel and genkernel again. I tried manually compiling, but it kept kicking out on errors, (probably not quite up to that yet hehe)

How can I get back into the later parts of the installation to edit things without having to redo the whole thing. When i insert the live CD to boot, there is nothing on root. How can i get access to the filesystem on my harddrive? Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[mwhahaha]

I am also having the same problem on a dell 650. I've installed it flawlessly on dell 650's with scsi, but everytime i go to install an IDE with the following drive setup it does not work:
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 (500M)
/dev/hda2 swap (2gig)
/dev/hda3 /var ext3 (10gig)
/dev/hda4 / ext3 (remainder either 35gig or 45gig)



edit: i have infact put the real_root, etc in my grub.conf. doesn't do a thing

[isoaga]

In order to get back to the filesystem you created on your harddrive you have to chroot into it. Something like this

After you have booted with the live cd and you get a promt do (replace hda4 with the root partition you created)

[isoaga]

I'm not sure but why is mount trying to mount /dev/hda4 to "/newroot" not "/"

[mwhahaha]

probably because / is taken up by the initrd image and so what it does is mount root then do like a chroot to it. but that's just conjecture. either way this new genkernel annoys me

[aratis]

I will try that, thanks alot

[dmack]

I just installed kernel 2.4.22-gentoo-rc5 and during the install I emerged genkernel version 3.0.1_beta11. After going through the install instructions, I found that the genkernel had changed dramatically (from the instructions shipped with the 1.4 Live CD). The kernel compile process completed successfully using "genkernel all". The problem, however, was that on boot, I continued to get the "Root block device unspecified or not detected" error.

After reading some of the posts on this, I went back and made sure that reiserfs support was built into the kernel. Still no luck. Finally, I tried re-compiling the kernel using the "genkernel --menuconfig all" option again. The build finished successfully and what to my wondering newb eyes did appear after the compile completed?

add:
root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/$ROOT (where $root is what you specified in fstab)

After thumping my head a few times, I modified the kernel line to read:
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/kernel-2.4.22-gentoo-rc5 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda3

Worked like a charm, your mileage may vary.

[second_exodous]

Hmm, things have changed since I installed Gentoo on my notebook. This is a fresh install on a old pc (well, 2 years old) and I'm getting the same error with step 2 having much more:

[second_exodous]

Ok, here's the fix for this problem, if you have this problem chroot back in with the live cd and recompile your kernel:

genkernel all --menuconfig

and go to file systems, and make reiserfs compiled in rathter than a module.

Thanx,
Stan

[peter96362930]

Thanks. Recompiling reiserfs support into the kernel (not as a module) solved this problem for me.