Kernel 2.6.30 blocks on udev initialisation

[Rémi Moyen <rmoyen@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Until recently, I was still on a (quite old) 2.6.26 kernel (stock one
from testing). I also had an old version of udev (< 150). A few days
ago, I made a full update of my system. It first tried to upgrade udev
to 150, but when doing this complained that my current kernel had the
CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED option activated and that it was no more
supported and likely not to work at all. Although it was also trying
to install the new kernel at the same time (in which I believe this
option is no more activated), I guess since I was not the current
active kernel, this caused the error.

So I first installed the new kernel (2.6.30), then wanted to reboot on
this kernel (so still with the old udev) in order to complete the udev
installation. When rebooting, the new kernel loads, one of the very
first thing it says is "udev: waiting for /dev to be fully populated",
but then nothing happens. After 1 min (and every minute after), I get
a message about the CPU being stuck since 60 secs, but even after 4-5
minutes, nothing more happens.

After rebooting on the old kernel (2.6.26), I installed the 2.6.32
kernel from unstable. This one worked fine with the old udev. I
finished the update of udev (150) under this kernel, and rebooted
again: the 2.6.32 kernel works fine, the 2.6.30 has still exactly the
same problem. The 2.6.26 kernel, although still with the non-supported
kernel config option on, also works correctly. On all working kernels,
I get a bunch of warning about deprecated udev options that have to be
changed in various files, but apart from this, I don't see any
problems and all my hardware is working fine.

Has anyone an idea as to what happens with the 2.6.30 kernel? I didn't
find anything in the bug reports nor on the web about this.

Thanks!
-- 
Rémi Moyen