Ok, here's my problem, I just recently attempted to upgrade my system from Mandrake 8.0 to Mandrake 9.1

The upgrade appeared to go fine, until it asked me to reboot.

After the reboot, all I got was:

LI

Which, I have found out, is generally an indication of the boot-loader being screwed. So, I booted the install CD in "rescue" mode and attempted to reinstall the boot-loader. No luck, it gave me an error that said:

/dev/hda : No such file or directory

I figured maybe there was a problem with "lilo.conf" so I booted into the Linux BBC (Bootable Business Card), mounted my hard drive and checked out lilo.conf, it was fine. Then I went to "/dev" and discovered that EVERYTHING in it was GONE! All that was left was:

cdrom cdrom-old cdrom2 null

and the following directories:

ataraid dri

I have tried using MAKEDEV from the Linux BBC to recreate all the devices on the mounted drive, but it keeps spewing something about an error with "ataraid/d0"

Now, there is no raid device in my system at all, so I don't know where this is coming from...

What has Mandrake 9.1 done to my system?
How do I get my devices back?

I REALLY, REALLY do not want to have to re-install or re-partition anything, as I have dual-boot Win98 (games) and Linux system that has taken me months to tweak into just the right configuration.

Someone help!

I have the EXACT same problem.. Upgraded from 8.2 to 9.1. Neither restore nor reinstall bootloader works... (restore says I dont have a boot loader, and reinstall "Fatal: open /dev/sda: No such file or directory").

PLEASE somebody help!!!

I have found out some more information, it seems this problem might be related to something called "devfs" that Mandrake adopted at some point...

Additionally, Mandrake appears to use "makedev" instead of the original "MAKEDEV"....

I am going to try to "chroot" to the downed system from the LinuxBBC and then use "makedev" I will keep you posted...

In the meantime, does anyone know how "devfs" might be used to help in this situation? (Or how it relates to the cause of the problem?)

Thanks!

I'd just like to point out that pure upgrades are never a good idea - they almost always fail to some extent. A fresh installation is preferable - although it requires much more work.

I'd like to add to that a tip...most of the time, for incremental upgrades (ie: 8 to 9, 9.0 to 9.1 that sort of thing...not 6 to 9 or something), you can do one of two things:

1 - backup your /home directory somewhere and restore it after you do a fresh install

or

2 - keep a separate partition for /home and don't format it during a fresh install.

This will keep all your settings and stuff, and should mostly work with newer versions of apps (MOST of the time)

I "upgraded" from mandrake 9.0 to 9.1 painlessly doing this...it kept all my settings for blackbox, KDE, evolution and Gnomeicu etc...

Note: I realize this doesn't solve your current problem, I wish I had an answer on that one...I just figured you might want to know for when you next upgrade.

Actually, I do have a seperate partition for my /home directory, and I do have a backup of it, and that is the method I used to upgrade from 7.2 to 8.0.

However, I attempted the actual "upgrade" option because I have a whole lot of RPMs that are interdependent on one another that took me a long time to get properly installed, and I don't relish the idea of having to re-install everything...

Also, I would like to know what the hell happened so that if I ever encounter similar problems in the future I will know how to fix it.

I have never had to use "makedev" or "MAKEDEV" or devfs before, but if they solve my problem, I will know how to use them and what they do in the future....

I have found a solution to my problem, here's what it is, it's actually so simple.

First off, the problem originates because any Mandrake version > 8.2 uses the "devfs" system to create entries in "/dev", so it deletes your /dev during upgrade, but for some reason, then cannot access /dev/hda in order to reinstall the bootloader for the reboot.

So the rescue mode fails to install the bootloader because /dev/hda does not exist...

MAKEDEV doesn't work either because Mandrake has switched to it's own version called "makedev"...

So this is what I did:

-Boot the install CD in "rescue" mode
-mount all your partitions
-go to console
-chroot to your harddrive (should be "chroot /mnt")
-use makedev to recreate your devices:
makedev /dev
-exit chroot
-load the rescue gui again (rescue-gui)
-re-install the bootloader
-reboot
-voila! it works perfectly....

Hmm, seems I have additional problems.. I did all your steps listed, and it seemed to go OK. Only when I reboot I get the error message Kernel Panic: Try passing init=option to kernel. I've tried that, but it doesn't help... Is this any problem you've encountered???

Thanks for posting yout solution anyways, Joe!

Hrm, I had a similar problem with my MDK 7.2 box, this box I tried to upgrade, but then I messed around trying to recreate /dev/hda using MAKEDEV and "mknod" and copying from the rescue ramdisk etc...

So essentially, I buggered it up completely.

Eventually, I figured the problem was that 7.2 was just too ancient to be upgraded and moved on to my 8.0 box...

When I finally did discover the fix, I went back to my 7.2 box and performed the same steps, with one exception, I deleted the entire /dev directory first, then performed all the above steps.

Now it works great. So maybe you might want to delete the /dev before you do the new makedev...

Thanks for your reply! We solved the problem by switching back to kernel 18mdk, because somehow kernel 21mdk failed to install completely... We're very glad that we didn't have to reinstall everything since our server contains the files and accounts for a couple of hundred students at a university

Have a nice day!