Why is it looking for /root/dev ?

[Mike Yates]

On Sun, 2 May 2010 00:29:41 -0400 Tom H wrote:
> On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Mike Yates<ubuntu at fonehelp.co.uk>  wrote:
>    
>> I've upgraded my 9.10 to 10.04 on-line but it will only work with the
>> older kernel (2.6.31-21) not 2.6.32-21, which locks up completely while
>> attempting to start a recovery shell (busybox started but no prompt).
>> Among the messages above that are three curious ones, failing to find
>> /root/dev, /root/proc and /root/sys, also "no /sbin/init.007".
>> As I said, switching to the older kernel, with all the same arguments on
>> the same filesystem, works perfectly.
>> Is the initrd corrupt?
>> I've tried "apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic"
>> to no avail.
>>      
> No idea what "no /sbin/init.007" means but the "/root/..." messages
> mean to me that your initrd is not mounting your partition(s) and it
> is therefore failing when it tries to move them at the end of its
> scripts (init-bottom IIRC).
>
> Are you using lvm or mdadm?
>
> The "... reiinstall ..." should have had the same effect but you
> should also try deleting and recreating your initrd with
> "update-initramfs -d ..." and "update-initramfs -c ...".
>    
Well, Tom, the recreate of initrd ran OK but the same error occurred.
Although usually just after Busybox started, it sometimes froze at 
different times
and in these, other messages were visible, such as "not yet mounted, use 
bootdelay".
Before trying that grub parameter, I took a good look at /etc/fstab and 
found that the root partition was type ext4 (perhaps slower mounting in 
v2.6.32 ??) and that it was at line 34 of the file because I had sorted 
my many testing drives and partitions into physical order (/ = 
/dev/sdb5) and there were lots of installation comments.

So, I just moved the root-mounting line of /etc/fstab to the top and 
it's fixed !!

I'm still curious about those messages I received. Perhaps there's 
something historical about putting dev under root but I've been using 
Linux since 1993 and I've never seen it.
The number appended to /sbin/init seems to be random, init.6700 last 
time, so perhaps an "artifact" of "rootless messaging", but a little 
worrying perhaps.


-- 
Mike Yates           Frome   Somerset   England