Re: unable to open initial console

[David Liontooth <liontooth@cogweb.net>]

Not terribly on topic perhaps, but here's what worked -- a very odd 
solution:

   You need to create a console device node in dev on / behind the
   tmpfs mount that udev uses:

   # mkdir /tmp/root
   # mount --bind / /tmp/root
   # mknod /tmp/root/dev/console c 5 1

That got me past the missing console and I'm up and running. I don't 
know how to turn this into a permanent solution, but perhaps the problem 
only occurs on the first boot.

Dave


David Liontooth wrote:
> Hi Török,
>
> Thank you, that's very helpful. I ended up just installing a new 
> Debian on a different partition; once that was done, the installer 
> agreed to rewrite the MBR, and my old installation showed up in grub. 
> I would much prefer being allowed to rewrite the MBR without first 
> having to install another OS.
>
> Once I got that far, I could boot into the OS I'm trying to rescue; 
> however, I now ran into the dreaded "warning: unable to open initial 
> console". This is also /dev/ related, and this suggests I have a 
> general dev problem with the partition I cloned. Now that I have a 
> parallel partition that is fully operational, is there a way I can 
> repopulate my /dev directory from chroot, or through a script?
>
> Using "mount -o bind /dev /root2/dev", I can now chroot into /root2 
> and see I have a complete /dev directory, so that for instance I can 
> mount /dev/hda1 on a chrooted /boot. How do I make this happen when I 
> boot directly into that partition? I added this to /etc/fstab:
>
>    devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     
> mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
>
> But it didn't solve the problem. This seems to be a well-defined 
> problem that should have a straightforward solution.
>
> I appreciate your help with this; the partition I'm trying to rescue 
> is in a stable functional state that is no longer possible to duplicate.
>
> Dave
>
> Török Edvin wrote:
> > On 3/24/06, David Liontooth <liontooth@cogweb.net> wrote:
> >  
> > > I cloned a drive, starting with the MBR:
> > >
> > >   dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc  bs=446 count=1
> > >
> > > However, after installing the cloned drive in the new machine, all I 
> > > get
> > > is a scrolling GRUB filling the screen. I downloaded an amd64 netboot
> > > CD, mounted / and /boot in /target,
> > >     
> >
> > Did you do a mount -o bind /dev /target/dev ?
> >
> >  
> > > [...]
> > > In the installer shell, I get
> > >
> > > ~ # df
> > > Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> > > tmpfs                   102400     30248     72152  30% /
> > > /dev/cdroms/cdrom0       86390     86390         0 100% /cdrom
> > > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2  7740384   3197252   4149944  
> > > 44%
> > > /target
> > > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1    97826      9736     82871  
> > > 11%
> > > /target/boot
> > >     
> > So /dev is not bind mounted in target, try bind mounting it
> >
> >  
> > > So it's using devfs, which I thought was deprecated?
> > >     
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=274511
> > AFAIK Sarge CD uses devfs,
> > but the etch installer uses udev, quote from that bugreport:
> > "d-i uses the device naming scheme originally used by devfs (although
> > we use udev now)".
> >
> >  
> > > What do I tell
> > > grub-installer?
> > >     
> > Use devfs naming, /dev/ide/host0/...., see where is the equivalent of 
> > hda.
> >
> >  
> > > [...]
> > > klogd[245]: segfault at 000000000000003e rip 0000002a9568b94e rsp
> > > 0000007fbfffe2a0 error 6
> > >     
> > How did this segfault happen?
> >
> >  
> > > [...]
> > > What can I do? All I want is to rewrite the MBR, the installation 
> > > itself
> > > is fine.
> > >     
> > If the netboot CD isnt working for you, could you try using a LiveCD,
> > like Knoppix?
> >