I have been using Ubuntu 6.10 for several months now, and recently I decided that I like KDE and Kubuntu better, so I thought it would be a good idea to switch to it, and in the process upgrade to 7.04 so that I could get some Beryl packages with it. I downloaded the CD and everything, installed the system and booted up. Everything goes good for a few seconds, then the system hangs when booting the USB HID driver. I have no idea why. There isn't even hard drive activity. If I don't have any USB things plugged in, it hangs while "waiting for the root filesystem." Is there anything specific that would cause this?

Thanks in advance.

Yes, seems it is waiting for your root filesystem ...


Check your /boot/grub/menu.lst ...

If you are running a Pata disk with more than 15 partitions and has installed the latest Kubuntu with 2.6.20 kernel then a poosible explanation is :-

Kernel 2.6.20 abandones the Pata disk naming convention and calls it as a SCSI/Sata/USB disk like sda, sdb, sdc, sdd etc. As SCSI/Sata/USB disk cannot have more than 15 partitions the Pata disk, if has more, will cause Kubuntu to stop because no one knows what to do in such a situation.

The nuisance is the installer can recognise the Pata disks and use the convention during installation but the installed system doesn't.

Alright, I looked into it, and although I'm not using grub, but instead Lilo 22.7.1 (to the best of my recollection), there doesn't seem to be a problem with what I have inside my lilo.conf:

image = /mnt/kubuntu/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic
initrd = /mnt/kubuntu/boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
root = /dev/hda3
label = Kubuntu
read-only

It is definitely hanging on loading the root filesystem though, because I noticed that it just has a few more lines of output when there is a USB device in there; the root filesystem loading message is just above that. I considered whether it was the initrd image's fault, so I am going to try to load the kernel without it and see what happens here in just a minute. I will report back if anything changes for the better.

As for the IDE disk with > 15 partitions, I don't think that would apply to me, because I have five. I have three primary and two extended.

I did get it to boot up one time, looked at dmesg and /var/log/messages and stuff, and I didn't see anything explicitly wrong, but I guess I could have missed something. Are there any other ideas?

Thank you for the help!

Hello !

these lines seem odd to me ... It's been a long time since I used lilo, but should't it look like "/boot/vmlinuz..." ?

Can you post the result of a sudo fdisk -l ? Maybe /dev/hda3 isn't the root partition ...

not entirely sure but shouldn't use /mnt anything on boot. Would give exactly the error you described.

image = /mnt/kubuntu/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic
initrd = /mnt/kubuntu/boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
root = /dev/hda3
label = Kubuntu
read-only

should look something more like:

image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic
initrd = /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
root = /dev/hda3
label = kubuntu
read-only

This is assuming of course you 1) have one linux os on your machine and 2) its on /dev/hda3. Hope this helps.

Good Luck

Oh my! I'm sorry! I forgot to specify, the lilo.conf file is on my Slackware system, so I have to mount the kubuntu partition to be able to load the kernel. I mount it on /mnt/kubuntu, so that's why that is like that. I know that will work some of the time because it worked when I was using Ubuntu 6.10, but if I can't do that now I don't know.

Instead of using the /mnt path, make copies of the vmlinuz and initrd (would suggest adding .kubuntu to the names to avoid confusion) and move the copies into the Slackware /boot directory (Slackware is booting right?). Next you would have to add these to the lilo.conf file. Looks something like this:

image = /boot/vmlinuz
initrd = /boot/initrd.img
root = /dev/hd* #Slackware root
label = Slackware
read only

image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic.kubuntu
append = "root=/dev/hda3" ##### does the 2.6.20 kernel name all drives sd*? If so this would be /dev/sda3 and you would need to add **** for lilo
initrd = /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic.kubuntu
****root = /dev/hda3
label = kubuntu
read-only

P.S. This is the only way i found to do this with lilo and is why i switched to grub . But this configuration should work.

edit: also, did knoppix put a vmlinuz and initrd file in / on hda3. If so might be best to use them.

From my experience I can confirm that the designated home for kernels and inird files is always "/" or "/boot". Standrd Lilo and Grub implementations always go to /boot directory. Only 1 to 3 distros in a 100 call them up from / directory but the master copies will still be in /boot

Hern_28, thank you for the advice. I will try that.

saikee: Yeah, the /vmlinuz file is ususally a symbolic link to the actual kernel which is in the /boot directory.

Thanks for the help! I will try that Hern, and I will tell you if it worked.

Hello !

This is an advantage of GRUB : you can boot kernels which are located on another partition (I do that for my LFS system) ...

Lilo has a more "classic" way ... To have some clean system with it, you should use a separate /boot partition, which will be used for both systems ...

Well, you can boot kernels on other partitions with LILO too, but LILO just uses the memory address of where the kernel is stored. What that means is that as long as you mount the other partition, and then act like you're booting from the mount directory (<mount path>/boot/vmlinuz like I had), you can boot the other partition's kernel too. I will be sure to make a separate boot partition next time I do some hard drive editting.

I don't think that this has anything to do with my lilo.conf file now, I think it more has to do with some kind of incompatability with the OS on my computer. It's confusing me though.

Thanks for all the help guys