Can't mount drive after booting other OS from USB

SignetGreen · 10-08-2013, 09:05 AM

I made a fresh installation of Slackware 14 on sda2, ran through the beginner's slackware page, everything was OK. I connected an old hard drive to USB and booted it to get some files. When I rebooted into Slackware it gets past lilo then hangs and says this, regardless of what I choose at lilo. It panicked at some point, I think after I typed exit.

Code:

mount: mounting /dev/sda2 on /mnt failed: Invalid argument
ERROR: No /sbin/init found on rootdev (or not mounted). Trouble ahead.
You can try to fix it. Type 'exit' when things are done.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

I couldn't find a quick fix so I reinstalled 14 and repeated the process with the same result.

willysr · 10-08-2013, 09:15 AM

it seems that you misplaced the hard drive, so it couldn't find the root partition and also the kernel images

SignetGreen · 10-08-2013, 09:27 AM

Thanks. So is there a way to prevent it from forgetting where the hard drive is?

willysr · 10-08-2013, 09:43 AM

You can use the installer, either from DVD or USB-based Flash Drive to boot and mount the correct partition and change it on the /etc/fstab and try to reboot

SignetGreen · 10-08-2013, 11:45 AM

That won't be permanent though will it, if I boot from USB again I'll have to fix it again won't I? Is this a feature, do slackers not boot from USB?

colorpurple21859 · 10-08-2013, 01:35 PM

Connecting hard drive to usb changed naming of hard drives, using uuids will prevent this. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...-names-in-lilo

SignetGreen · 10-08-2013, 01:58 PM

That got it, thanks colorpurple.

volkerdi · 10-08-2013, 03:55 PM

This won't happen if you use a generic kernel. In -current it is fixed so that the drives will not be reordered with either generic or huge kernels.