Hello All,

I just compiled a couple of kernels (2.4.23 & 2.6.0) on my Debian Knoppix (2.3) and lilo failed. This apparently doesn't have anything to do with those kernels as lilo also fails with my backup copy (before the compile). Here is the error that lilo gives:

root@bamfopix:/etc# lilo
Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not match '/dev' directory structure.
Name change: '/dev/hdk' -> '/dev/hdk'
Fatal: open /dev/hdk: No such file or directory
root@bamfopix:/etc#

This is so weird. I searched google for answers and did not find much info. The first and last line of the output was seen often but it was about the devfs kernel option/module (of which I am not using) and what is this about "Name change: '/dev/hdk' -> '/dev/hdk'"? I don't see a change in the name do you? the typical thing that people were seeing on google was similar to:

Name Change: /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc --> /dev/hda



Any insight?


Cheers,
Silas Bennett

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Hi again All,

A bit more poking around and I think I now know what the problem is, although I do not yet know the solution.

My Mobo has 2 ide controlers and a built-in promise raid controller with 2 ide controlers. I also have a promise TX2 Ultra 133 pci ide controler card in my system to get my 180GB HD to see more than 137GB of storage. All together my system has 6 ide controllers (that is 12 possible drives) but /dev/hd? only shows the following devices:

/dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd /dev/hde /dev/hdf /dev/hdg /dev/hdh

I have drive with a couple of M$ OS's on hda, hdb is not used, hdc & hdd have a cdrw & and a dvd respectivly, hde hdf & hdh are not used, and I have the 180GB with linux OS's on hdg.

I have 2 more (60GB) drives on the promise raid controller that show up in /proc/partitions as hdi and hdk, but those devices are not found under /dev. I know that there is some way to create these devices, but I haven't a clue how?

Help? insights? RTFM's followed by a link to the M?

Cheers,
Silas Bennett


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I think you're looking for the mknod command to create the missing devices.

See man mknod.

Lyle

And to supplement the mknod man page, I would guess that you want to create a block file, (with major, minor numbers similar to the other drives?). The major, minor numbers for the other drives can be seen with an ls -l /dev/hd*. I think they should be the numbers between the group owner and the date.

Hello All,

Thanks for the replys,

For anyone who has this same problem and reads this in the archives:

Similar to mknod, I found a script (it may be Debian specific, not sure though, check Google) called MAKEDEV (yes all uppercase) that doen't make you read through the kernel source to find out what major minor you are supposed to use with mknod.

# note the second line is important I didn't do this first time round
#and it made a bunch of block devices in my home directory.

su
cd /dev
MAKEDEV -v hdi
MAKEDEV -v hdj
MAKEDEV -v hdk
MAKEDEV -v hdl


That did the trick, lilo ran without a hitch. Unfortunatly my kernels wouldn't boot, but that is a Knoppix specific problem that I have delt with before and just need to remember how to solve it. I think it has something to do with cramfs, as the Knoppix kernel compiles everything possible as modules (including filesystem support). The bugger is when you have it installed to the HD and compile a new kernel for your HD installed distro, something is screwy (this is the part I forgot), and the system can't mount the root partition. Of course I just went off topic, but what the hey, I thought that by typing this out I might remember how to fix it. Oh well it will come to me soon.


Cheers,
Silas Bennett


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