recent kernels won't boot

[R Kimber]

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:45:29 -0500
"Phil Cryer" <phil at cryer.us> wrote:

> Add a 'me too' to this one, but only with the following kern:
> 
> 2.6.13-9-686-smp
> 
> I haven't put a bug in yet, but -8 works fine; have rolled back for
> now.
> 
> P
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Evan Martin <martine at danga.com>
> To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 09:42:14 -0700
> Subject: recent kernels won't boot
> 
> I've been happily apt-get'ing upgrades for months now (since before
> Breezy, if that helps), but recent kernels suddenly stopped working.
> 
> With these more recent kernels at startup, I get, after the "audit"
> console message that occurs on regular boots:
>   Unable to find volume group "hda2"
>   ALERT! /dev/hda2 does not exist
> and then I'm dropped to busybox.
> 
> Datapoints:
> 2.6.10-5-686-smp -- ok
> 2.6.12-6-686-smp -- not ok
> I could narrow that down more if you think it'll help.
> 
> I've seen a few others have seen a similar problem, like this fellow:
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user/45920
> But they've all been lilo problems and I'm using grub
> (0.95+cvs20040624-17ubuntu5).
> 
> Some more data:
> I haven't changed my grub configuration from the default menu.lst and
> update-grub output.
> 
> I'm not using LVM, to my knowledge.  I did a pretty straightforward
> install of Ubuntu when I first set up this computer, and unless it
> set something up without my knowledge...
> 
> % cat /etc/fstab | grep -v '^#'
> proc            /proc           proc        defaults
> 0       0 /dev/hda2       /               reiserfs
> defaults,noatime    0       1 /dev/hdc        /media/cdrom0
> udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto      0       0
> 
> % cat /proc/cmdline
> root=/dev/hda2 ro quiet splash
> 
> Some guesses about the problem:
> - Maybe there's an assumption about your drive setup that was
> introduced in a later kernel?
> - The machine is a Shuttle "Zen XPC ST62K", which means it may have
> some funky hardware, so maybe the new kernel dropped some module?
> 
> I'd file a bug, but I'm not sure what package I should file against.

I'm not an expert, but could it be something to do with udev?  I've had
lots of problems with /dev/<whatever> not existing at times when other
parts of the system seemed to expect it to exist.

- Richard.
-- 
Richard Kimber
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/