Re: [gentoo-user] Boot situation

[Jo Are Rosland]

On 12.09, Colleen Beamer wrote:
> Block dev sda3 is not a valid root device
> The root block device is unspecified or not detected.

Does it say anything beyond that?  I'd expect it to continue with:

    Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell..
    boot() ::

The previous error message as well as this prompt are output
by the init script in your initrd, created by genkernel.  At
the "boot() :: " prompt you should be able to enter "shell"
as a value, in order to enter a shell.

Could you try this, then do an "ls" on the "/dev" directory
to verify what devices have been created at this stage?  Maybe
you have an sdb in addition to the sda, or maybe it's called
hda?  (The former could happen if you have an external USB
drive plugged in, the latter if you've configured the wrong
driver for your disk controller).  Of course, there's also
the possiblity that you don't see any obvious disk devices
at this stage.  If that's the case, you haven't configured
your kernel with any device drivers that can handle your
drive, and need to have another look at the kernel config.

Also, while running the livecd, if you know which device is
the root device as found by the livecd, you could label it,
then use the label when naming the root device instead of
the device name.  Labels are more stable than device names...

To label a file system on a device if you're using ext2/ext3,
use the command "e2label -L <label> <device>", eg:

    e2label -L ROOT /dev/sda3

You should then change grub.conf to read:

    real_root=LABEL=ROOT

instead of "real_root=/dev/sda3"

And last, specify LABEL=ROOT for root device in /etc/fstab
on the root device as well:

    LABEL=ROOT / ext2 defaults 0 1

... or something like that.

-- 
Jo.
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