Bug#516931: Yet anonther reason for the "Waiting for root file system ..." error

[Nicolas François <nicolas.francois@centraliens.net>]

Hello Robin,

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 08:59:35AM -0600, Robin Haunschild wrote:
> Package: release-notes
> Severity: important
> 
> I also got this error after the upgrade from etch to lenny but I was surprised 
> to see that neither hdaX nor sdaX was able to provide a root file system. 
> Surprisingly, my lenny with kernel 2.6.26-1-686 has still the hda 
> nomenclature of the hard disks. The old etch kernel was still able to boot. 
> The problem was that the upgrade procedure put a symlink from /vmlinuz 
> to /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686 and analogously with initrd.img. My root and
> boot directories are on separate partitions. Therefore /vmlinuz pointed into 
> nothing during the boot sequence. After removing this symlink and copying the 
> kernel from /boot to /vmlinuz lenny was able to boot.

I'm not really aware of how the boot system is installed, but maybe the
answers to the questions below can help finding where is the issue or how
to document it.

What is your bootloader?
What are the file systems used for your root and boot partitions?
Are you using LVM?

With the process you described above, you probably also drop support for
security updates of the kernel.

Did you experience other issues since your etch->lenny upgrade (e.g.
during kernel updates)?
Or was /vmlinuz replaced by a symlink in the mean time?

Thanks in advance,
-- 
Nekral