Hello, this is a continuation from a thread on the Linux Kernel forum.

I've got my drive being recognized by the kernel, but the system still won't boot. It results in an error stating:

Checking file systems
/dev/hda3:
Superblock could not be read or does not describe
a correct ext2 file system. {goes on from there}

Looking back at the boot process, I believe the problem actually is caused by:

Populating /dev with device nodes: [FAIL]

Because my swap partition is also unable to be seen. At this point I'm stuck. I'm not familiar with the udev and sysfs, but I did follow the book character for character with obvious exceptions. I even compiled the kernel with most extras left out (sound, NIC, framebuffering, etc).

The LFS Live CD is what I used and it sees the HD and files just fine and I'm able to "chroot" into the LFS system after (section 6.2.2 and 6.2.3) "Mounting and Populating /dev" and "Mounting Virtual kernel File Systems".

Just the booting of the new system can't seem to populate /dev.

Any idea where I can go from here?

go back and restart from the install of the dev package.
[ if you used a different filesystem for the partitions on the hd than ext2, you need to build the kernel with that filesystem explicitly. ]

the livecd is built with support for most filesystems, which would improve it's ability to recognise the drive with your partitions on it when your build doesn't recognise it correctly.

Understood. The filesystem used *is* ext2 and I've compiled into the kernel (not module) ext2 and ext3...both with the extra attributes. In fact, the current kernel has no modules and minimal support for anything but booting (i.e. no network, sound, etc).

Nevertheless, I did restart from udev install. No luck. Same error. UDEV can't populate.

SOLVED!

In my effort to remove unnecessary options from the kernel and deduce the problem, I removed a vital requirement...networking. The kernel sends uevents to udevd via unix domain sockets. By removing networking from the kernel, so were unix domain sockets.

So, my problem was solved by putting in IDE, PIIX, and Networking including Unix domain sockets.

Thanks everyone!

--David