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If you ever might add a new disk drive and want to move the Gentoo |
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root partition onto the new (maybe faster) drive then my struggles |
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in doing that may be relevant to you. Copying the partition didn't |
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just work --- I found that the /dev directory initialization was not |
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obvious. |
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|
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I did conclude to my own satisfaction that the /sbin/rc script (v. 1.16) |
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is in error at line 312 and should read as follows: |
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309 #we want devfsd running after a change of runlevel (if we return |
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310 #from runlevel 'single') |
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311 if [ -z "$(ps -A | grep devfsd)" ] && \ |
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312 [ -n "$(cat /proc/mounts | grep -e '/dev devfs')" ] |
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313 then |
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314 /sbin/devfsd /dev &>/dev/null |
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315 fi |
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The distributed script had "cat mounts" and failed when devfsd |
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was not already running. |
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|
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After reading the devfs FAQ and Robbins paper on devfs at |
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IBM:developerWorks I concluded that a cleanly built root |
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partition should have an empty /dev directory. It is entirely |
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populated by devfs when that is "mounted" and accessed. |
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|
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BUT Gentoo linux, installed from build rc6 r14, crashes when |
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booted from the same /boot partition but using a new root ("/") |
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and an empty /dev (it had more interesting problems when |
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I attempted to create a fully populated dev/ by copying the |
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in-use /dev from the old root partition onto the new partition |
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s.a. |
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star -c /dev | star -x -C /mnt/partition # Don't do this |
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|
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I had to add the devfs mount option to the kernel so that |
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the grub commands that had been |
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root (hd0,0) |
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kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda2 hdc=ide-scsi |
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became now |
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root (hd0,0) |
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kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/sdb1 hdc=ide-scsi devfs=mount |
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|
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It is a mystery to me why it now becomes necessary to add |
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the devfs=mount option to the grub kernel command, booting |
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the same kernel using the same devfs.conf file and same |
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root partition (but copied onto a new disk). If this is obvious |
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to everyone else, then so be it; but maybe it is worth |
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documenting that under some conditions it becomes |
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necessary to add the kernel option. |
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|
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I hope that this is helpful. |
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