Re: boot: unable to open initial console

["G. Crimp" <ye416@victoria.tc.ca>]

On Mon, Aug 03, 1998 at 05:58:46AM -0700, Taren wrote:
> > >         VHS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
> > > then    Unable to open an initial console
> > > 
> > 
> > Looks like /dev/tty0 isn't there.
> > 
> > Are use sure you did copy the devices correctly (cp does not copy
> > devices correctly, use tar or cpio). 
> > 
> > Dirk
> > 
> 
> Or the permissions aren't set right.  I've found that when copying files
> from /dev, the permissions rarely stay the way they were originally
> 

	I'd checked that already.  I used cpio to copy the dev and var
directories.  All mode bits and ownership are intact.  Only the time stamp
is different between the original and copied tty0 and console.

	I think more than likely the problem is somewhere else.  I've copied
everything over, but the partition structure is not the same between the two
drives.  In fact, on the old drive, there was only one partition (except for
the swap of course).  I've broken this down on the new disk.  Also, root is
partition 3 whereas it was 1 on the old disk (I'm not using the first two
partitions for Debian).

	I'm thinking that there is some boot script that got blindly copied
over to the new disk, and is still looking on hda1 from something that is
now on a different partition.  Kind of like if I'd forgotten to change the
boot= and root= in lilo.conf

	I don't understand the Linux boot procedure very well, so I don't
know where to start to look.

	Any more ideas out there?

	Thanks,
	Gerald


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