ROFL no kidding :D


I take it you only have one ide controller.
devfs does not appear to be running, the boot line has it because of lilo, but it is not running if you did not put it in kernel.

give me the output of:
mount
no options to it, just mount

also give me the contents of /etc/fstab

I think that sence you do not have devfs setup correctly that it has none of the important /dev/whatever stuff, you main hd mounts forne because of the boot params, but the others can't mount using fstab because the device nodes don't exist.

so definately do the devfs stuff.

also, I will see if I can find just where devfs is or if it is even in the 2.4 kernel by default

ok, here is what to do:

go into code maturity level options
click y - Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/ drivers

devfs and many other things require this

next go back (hit exit once)
go into filesystems
between
/proc filesystem support and /dev/pts filesystem support should be /dev file system support (experimental)

select y for /dev filesystem support

oh also select y for automatically mount at boot, but not for debugging

OK, results of mount:

/dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620)

Contents of /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/hdd,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

Update:

I just checked the link you gave me for devfsd and the file isn't there...

OK, I've recompiled the kernel with devfs compiled into it, so, time to reboot?

yes, go ahead and reboot, I will go ahead and assume that if mandrake gave you devfs they gave you the daemon as well..
remember to use the new kernel you need to do:
cat /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage > /boot/vmlinuz
cp /usr/src/linux/system.map /boot/System.map
lilo
then reboot, typing lilo there is vital

the mount and fstab confirmed for me that not having devfs is why the homes did not load.

OK, well that failed miserably... Crashed out as soon as it left lilo. Good job we set a restore point...:confused:

Noticed on bootup that Mandrake did indeed include the devfs daemon...

ok, what kind of crash? what exactly happened?

The screen just went blank. None of the usual bootup sequence at all, just a blank screen.

ok, I know what the problem is.. kinda, basically you boot up to a higher res/color than the typical 640x480x16c (vga=whatever in lilo)
for that to work you need the framebuffr stuff configured
it is under graphics support int eh config
I am betting you have an nvidia card or another card listed in there.
I have never made those work, I have only made the generic work.
disable everything in there
enable support for frame buffer
enable VESA VGA graphics support
enablr Video mode selection support
enable framebufffer console support
some of these may be sub-options to other otions, I do not have a kernel source handy to tell you for sure at the moment, play around a bit, just don't use the card specific driver, enable the vesa, the 16color, and then there should be one near the bottom that when selected gives a list of resolutions, select that one and all the resolutions Ithink it is advanced low level options
also do not enable virtual frame buffer, then you will definately get no video.

and if you want to use the new kernel and don't care about the high res boot sequence you can disable the framebuffer stuff or edit the /etc/lilo.conf so that the vga= option is set to vga=normal.

at the lilo prompt
lilo:
you can type linux vga=normal to boot it as well.

another note, the reason you got video on the non devfs kernel is because the framebuffer device ode couldn't be found, that uis why it worked the first time, not the second

OK, gonna reboot again...

Update:

I missed out ext3 filesystem support, no wonder I wasn't able to access my home directories.

that was only part of it I believe.

OK, now I'm getting segmentation faults when I try and recompile.

init/do_mounts.c: In function `prepare_namespace':
init/do_mounts.c:922: internal error: Segmentation fault