LinuxQuestions.org - System hangs at first boot

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System hangs at first boot

I just finished installing Gentoo, I use grub as my boot loader, after the installation I restart my computer, then during loading, the system hangs at the line

Code:

hde: attached ide-disk driver

Can anyone help figure this out?

do any of the other lines say anything interesting ?

how did you configure your kernel ?
yourself or with genkernel ?

No other lines seem interesting, for the configuration, I used genkernel.

hmm, strange....

did you set any exotic optimisation compiler flags ?
did you follow the gentoo handbook exactly ?

the problem here, is there are no error messages,
i was going to bring up the possibility you made a mistake configureing the kernel, but genkernel makes a very standard kernel that should work fine.

no error messages on a system that wont boot, this is going to be difficult.
is the freeze exactly the same on each boot ?or is the crash more random ?

I reinstalled the second time now, with genkernel again, this time the computer freeze at the lines

Code:

* Checking root filesystem...

fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/ROOT

/dev/ROOT:

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 file system, If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem, then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:

e2fsck -b 8193 <Device>

*Filesystem couldn't be fixed :(

Give root password for maintenance

And yes the computer hangs at these lines everytime.

are you using grub to boot ?
whats your /boot/gub/menu.lst config file contain ?

seems this is just a filesystem error, or missconfigured file.

what filesystem did you use while installing gentoo ?
i assume you chose ext3 ?
did you remeber to install the ext3 tools dureing the gentoo install ?

this is good.... its an easy problem to fix once i know exactly whats wrong.

i suspect its an incorrect boot option, in the grub config file, there should be a line thats says
kernel /path/yo/kernel root=/dev/hda1

i think maybe the root option is set to the wrong partiton.

or maybegenkernel didnt correctly compile ext3 support.

anyways, post the contents or /etc/grub/menu.lst and we can go from there.

I installed Gentoo in hdb, nothing is connected to hda, and I have XP installed in sda, I try to boot linux from hdb and XP from sda, thus it becomes a little confusing.
Here's my grub.conf

Code:

Default 0

timeout 5

title: Gentoo Linux

root (hd0,0)    #somewhere during the grub install, it says hd0 is hdb, and hd1 is sda

kernel /kernel-2.4.26-gentoo-r6 ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hdb3 init=/linuxrc

Here's my fstab incase somethings wrong with it too

Code:

/dev/BOOT              /boot      ext2      noauto,naotime              1 2

/dev/ROOT              /          ext3      naotime                      0 1

/dev/SWAP              none        swap      sw                          0 0

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0  /mnt/cdrom    auto      noauto,user                  0 0

none                  /proc        proc      defaults                    0 0

none                  /dev/shm    tmpfs      defaults                    0 0

/dev/BOOT
/dev/ROOT
/dev/SWAP

this looks wrong !
did you create /dev/boot etc as symbolic links to the real location of these partitons ?

/dev/sda..... is this disk an scsi disk or usb or somthing ?!

i thought you IDE hard disks....

replace BOOT ROOT and SWAP with the real locations of the partitons.

/dev/hda1 = primary master partiton 1
/dev/hda2 = primary master partiton 2
/dev/hdb1 = primary slave partiton 1
/dev/hdb2 = primary slave partiton 2
etc etc

you probably dont need to , but it may help changing ext2 and ext3 to auto....
to let linux auto detect the filesystem, just incase those settings are wrong.

from what ive seen, im assuming hdb1 is boot, hdb2 is swap, and hdb3 is root.
anyways, backup the fstab file, make the changes, then try booting that.

im 99% certain that fill fix it.

could it be that the gentoo handbook instructed you to put htings like /dev/BOOT, but is meant for you to replace BOOT with the correct boot partiton ?

this is what seems to have happened.

It worked, thanks for your responses, I'll try to install Gentoo again through stage 1 this time.