Read only hard drive causes hang at boot
 

Major problem. After installing (netinstall) Debian Woody, and updating critical packages via dselect, I can no longer boot my system.

Error is modprobe: modprobe: cannot create /var/log/ksymoops/20050629.log Read-only file system

It repeats, very rapidly, and eternally. I tried editing fstab to mound /dev/hda4 (root) as rw, but that didn't fix it.

Your kernel parameters tell the kernel to mount / ro first, so you need to update LILO or GRUB whichever you're using.

And if you installed woody recently, you should probably just download a Sarge netinstall and do that, Sarge is the new stable release.

Ok, so how do I tell LILO that I don't want / to be read only?

I'd do a Sarge netinstall, but after everything that Woody put me through, I kinda want to just run an upgrade.

----Have you thought about the possibility to download a fresh net-install sarge cd from the official Debian website? In addition it has the advantage of installing GRUB nativelly, which I suggest you to give it a try; if you don't mind.

Hope that makes some sense......

Juanjavier

As much as I'd love to, I'm a little constrained by hardware -- progear.org has more info. I want to maintian backwards compatibility with the stock software and dual-boot, so I think I'm limited to the available Lilo image. Also, it's just this side of being a dickless workstation, with no I/O but a single USB port and an integrated Orinoco Silver card. (I don't think it supports USB booting)

I'd reccommend reinstalling. The new Sarge installer is a lot easier than Woody's. Using older kernels and drivers (2.4 kernel and installing drivers using apt) maintaines a lot of compatibility with older hardware.

--Yes, but as bp12345 says chances are that you will able to install Sarge happily along 2.4 kernel; which will hold you lots of backward compatibility....


---I'm afraid you are wrong here. You can dual boot running Sarge kernel 2.4 GRUB Bootloader. It is WHAT IS RUNNING in the machine I am right typing this....;) ;) ;) In fact is often told that is easier with GRUB than it is with LILO.....Keep posting anyway, we will try to help as much as we can....

Greetings,
Juanjavier.