[SOLVED] Won't boot: /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc: line 193: /var/log/boot.log: Read-only file system

liquidkaleidoscopes · 11-11-2011, 09:33 AM

When I try to boot Linux from Scratch using an external U.S.B. hard drive, it encounters errors right as it is entering runlevel 3:

Code:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc: line 193: /var/log/boot.log: Read-only file system
/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc: line 194: /var/log/boot.log: Read-only file system

INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
Starting system log daemon.../lib/lsb/init-functions: line 636: /run/var/bootlog: No such file or directory
/lib/lsb/init-functions: line 569: /run/var/bootlog: No such file or directory
Starting kernel log daemon.../lib/lsb/init-functions: line 636: /run/var/bootlog: No such file or directory

Apparently, it is missing some directories, or can't make them in the first place. I think that my /etc/fstab looks ok; my computer has 8GB RAM, so I haven't bothered activating swap space yet:

Code:

# Begin /etc/fstab

# file system  mount-point  type   options         dump  fsck
#                                                        order

/dev/sdb3     /            ext4  defaults        1     1
#/dev/<yyy>     swap         swap   pri=1           0     0
proc           /proc        proc   defaults        0     0
sysfs          /sys         sysfs  defaults        0     0
devpts         /dev/pts     devpts gid=4,mode=620  0     0
tmpfs          /run         tmpfs  defaults        0     0
# End /etc/fstab

I am not sure what to do. My permissions for /run look ok (root has write access to it). I rechecked the section about configuring the boot scripts, but didn't see anything helpful there. I found reports of similar error messages on Google, but nothing in this context, and nothing that looked helpful.

druuna · 11-11-2011, 09:50 AM

Hi,

The main issue seems to be this:

Quote:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc: line 193: /var/log/boot.log: Read-only file system
/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc: line 194: /var/log/boot.log: Read-only file system

A read only filesystem. Have a look at the bottom of the rc script (D.1. /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc), the copy step doesn't work due to the read-only statud of /var.

The other errors are probably related to this.

Only thing I can come up with right now: Is the USB HD writeable (some have a hardware "switch" to make them read-only)?

Hope this helps.

liquidkaleidoscopes · 11-11-2011, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna

Hi,

The main issue seems to be this: A read only filesystem. Have a look at the bottom of the rc script (D.1. /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc), the copy step doesn't work due to the read-only statud of /var.

The other errors are probably related to this.

Only thing I can come up with right now: Is the USB HD writeable (some have a hardware "switch" to make them read-only)?

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply. The drive is definitely writeable; I've installed other distributions on it (such as Mandriva) without a problem. I did find that when I added 'rw' to the GRUB line, the boot process went slight further, though not much: I got an extra message about ksyslogd segfaulting. After I removed all the symlinks for ksyslogd from the rcx.d directories (and left 'rw' in the GRUB line), it actually brought me to a login prompt.

I logged in, and tried to check what was mounted. cat /etc/mtab and cat /proc/mounts returned nothing. That's weird... so I went into /proc and found that nothing was there. The same was true of /sys. So it's not mounting those, which is probably what's causing all these problems. I checked /etc/fstab, and I'm really not sure what (if anything) is wrong with it.

druuna · 11-11-2011, 12:27 PM

Hi,

You shouldn't have to add the rw option to grub. Normally the system is initially brought up in read only mode, to be re-mounted read-write at a later boot stage.

I do believe the error you posted is one of the symptoms of another problem that happened earlier in the boot process. Try booting to a prompt as you described and check the log files (might not be there due to the read-only problem

) and use the dmesg | more command to search for errors. We can only start guessing when there are no errors.

I'm assuming that you already checked for typo's and such in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and are reasonably sure you have a correct kernel configuration.

Hope this gets you going again.

liquidkaleidoscopes · 11-11-2011, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna

Hi,

You shouldn't have to add the rw option to grub. Normally the system is initially brought up in read only mode, to be re-mounted read-write at a later boot stage...

I think that the root of the problem, or at least a deeper layer of the problem, is that it's not mounting the filesystems in fstab. It knows to mount /dev/sdb3 as / because of GRUB, but since GRUB normally loads this as read-only (I think), and it doesn't mount per fstab, it doesn't know to remount it as read/write unless I specify to do so in GRUB.

Here is my dmesg: http://pastebin.com/N42ZaRYX . I didn't see any error messages that looked relevant here.

This is the GRUB entry (I didn't install GRUB 2 because I'm using my preinstalled GRUB. Also, loading the kernel 3.1 that I wrote specifically for L.F.S. from (hd1,0) (the external drive) makes no difference):

Code:

title Linux from Scratch
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/2639gentoor3b root=/dev/sdb3 rw rootdelay=3

I modified fstab a bit, but it still isn't working. Before, /dev/sdb3 was ext4. I thought that maybe there was a problem with it understanding some of the features that Gentoo was adding to the filesystem, so I compiled e2fsprogs in a temporary directory per 2.3 and ran './mke2fs -jv /dev/sdb3' to make it ext3 from that directory, but to no avail:

Code:

# <fs>			<mountpoint>	<type>		<opts>		<dump/pass>

/dev/sdb1		/boot		ext2		noauto,noatime	1 2
/dev/sdb2		none		swap		sw		0 0
/dev/sdb3		/		ext3		noatime		0 1
/dev/sr0		/mnt/cdrom	auto		noauto,ro,noexec,users	0 0
/dev/sr1		/mnt/cdrom1	auto		noauto,ro,noexec,users	0 0

proc			/proc		proc		defaults	0 0
sysfs			/sys		sysfs		defaults	0 0
devpts			/dev/pts	devpts		gif=4,mode=620	0 0
tmpfs			/run		tmpfs		defaults	0 0

Thanks for your help with sorting this out.

Major edit: I figured out the problem. /etc/inittab had an incorrect line in it. I changed line 5 to this:

Code:

si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc S

Now it boots. I don't know how it ended up like that. Maybe I accidentally copied it from a different version of the LFS manual... I wonder what else could be wrong. I suppose that I'll find out.

druuna · 11-11-2011, 03:54 PM

Hi,
The output shown by dmesg points to a Gentoo kernel:

Quote:

Linux version 2.6.39-gentoo-r3 (root@x) (gcc version 4.6.1 (Gentoo 4.6.1-r1 p1.0, pie-0.4.5) )

That can't be correct....

I'm not sure what you are trying to do, but this:

Code:

title Linux from Scratch
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/2639gentoor3b root=/dev/sdb3 rw rootdelay=3

does not point to the LFS kernel you talked about:

Quote:

This is the GRUB entry (I didn't install GRUB 2 because I'm using my preinstalled GRUB. Also, loading the kernel 3.1 that I wrote specifically for L.F.S. from (hd1,0) (the external drive) makes no difference):

The LFS 3.1 kernel isn't used.

EDIT: You edited your post while I was replying....

Although I'm still not sure what it is you are doing, I'm glad to see you seem to have it fixed

liquidkaleidoscopes · 11-11-2011, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna

Hi,The output shown by dmesg points to a Gentoo kernel: That can't be correct....

I'm sorry about the confusion. What I meant is that I've been using the kernel that I wrote for Gentoo, but that I also tried the kernel that I wrote per the L.F.S. guide, which is Linux 3.1, and that this didn't fix the problem, so I went back to the Gentoo kernel.

Thanks for your help