[Bug 32123] Cannot find ide hard disk on boot

[Caleb Moore]

Public bug reported:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/32123

Affects: linux-meta linux-image-amd64-k8 (Ubuntu)
       Severity: Normal
       Priority: (none set)
         Status: Unconfirmed

Description:
After upgrading to dapper drake (through a dist-upgrade) and rebooting,
my system did not start up.

I got the following message:


Decompressing Linux...Done
Booting the Kernel.
ALERT! /dev/hda1 does not exist. Dropping to a shell.


After this I was presented with the standard busybox shell and after checking the /dev directory of the initial ramfs root I noticed that there was indeed no /dev/hda1 or any /dev/hda for that matter.

As a bit of personal speculation, I think that it might be a problem
with the associated initrd not having the ide drivers accessable or
maybe something about its device nodes. I notice that the latest package
of the amd64 kernel at this time (2.5.15-15) does not have inbuilt ATA
drivers like breezys did and I think there might be a problem getting
them loaded up properly.

I built my own kernel and initrd image with ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL (IDE),
Enhanced IDE/MFM/RLL disk/cdrom/tape/floppy support (BLK_DEV_IDE) and
Include IDE/ATA-2 DISK support (BLK_DEV_IDEDISK) as inbuilt options and
it booted fine.