I have been rsyncing my Slackware 11.0 system to a new box after an old box began failing with disk and filesystem errors. When I try to boot the new box (either from lilo or the Slackware 11.0 installer disk 1) I get "unable to open an initial console" and then the machine reboots.

I hope someone knows how to fix this because I am in deep (*!@# until I can get this system running!

Thanks,
Rand

I am confused that you say you get the message when booting from lilo or the install disc... is that really what you meant?

A couple of stabs in the dark:
Are your device nodes different on the new box? If so then it is likely that your root or boot partitions are not being mounted correctly. There is a discussion of a similar problem here.

Also, since you rsynced from one box to another you almost certainly have different devices on the new box and you will likely need different lilo parameters, a different initrd if you use one, different modules and kernel support - could be a lot of things along those lines... and you will need to actually run lilo before you can boot to it...

But that brings us back to why you cannot boot to the install disk - can you be more specific about that?

Hi, sorry I should have been more specific.

I can boot *my system* from lilo or the installer disc. But it doesn't complete initialization because of the "unable to open an initial console" message.

I didn't create any device nodes on the new box. I thought they get created when the system comes up.

I don't have an initrd, I'm using the huge26.s kernel.

I will now look at your link you posted.

Thanks.

Fixed by rsync'ing /dev and /proc to the new box from Slax live CD filesystem. Also copied Slax's xorg.conf. Great live CD!

Now I have to figure out why my old Slack 11 doesn't see this NIC. There is no ETH0. But it does work and show up normally on Slax.