Bug#522041: initramfs-tools: conf/conf.d/cryptroot missing from initrd.img when using file system label

[Michael Lange <klappnase@web.de>]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:31:28 +0200
maximilian attems <max@stro.at> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:47:49AM +0200, Michael Lange wrote:
> > Package: initramfs-tools
> > Version: 0.92o
> > Severity: important
> > 
> > After upgrading from etch to lenny the new kernel would not boot, but stop with a message "Waiting for 
> > root file system". The root file system is on a luks partiton as /dev/mapper/root. As suggested in the 
> > debian docs I added a file system label to /etc/fstab to avoid possible /dev/hda - /dev/sda confusions 
> > with a new kernel before upgrading, so the line for the root partition in /etc/fstab looked like:
> > 
> > LABEL=CRYPTOROOT     /          ext3        defaults,errors=remount-ro     0   1
> > 
> > When I opened the initrd.img with gzip and cpio I found the conf/conf.d/cryptroot was missing; when I 
> > added it manually and re-packaged the initrd.img the system would boot up normally.
> > On a web search I found the discussion about bug #507721 and although I was not able to fully understand 
> > the technical details I thought it resembled my problems a lot. I then just tried to replace the 
> > LABEL=CRYPTROOT in /etc/fstab with /dev/mapper/root and ran update-initramfs again which then resulted 
> > in a correct initrd.img, so it looks like initramfs-tools does not handle file system labels correctly.
> 
> did you try to pass a "rootdelay=12" bootparam?

I did experiment with the rootdelay parameter, but please note that the reason the system would not boot was clearly the missing conf/conf.d/cryptroot file.
update-initramfs just failed to pack this file into the initrd.img if the root file system was specified by LABEL=CRYPTROOT in /etc/fstab. The system setup though was obviously ok., I just had to add the file manually to initrd.img and the system would boot up normally. The irony herein is that I would not have used the LABEL=... thing unless the debian docs had advised me to do so, otherwise I might end with an unbootable system ;)

Michael