[SOLVED] Unable to determine major/minor number of root device - USB

Question

I installed Arch on a USB harddrive of mine from within VirtualBox with the intention of running the installation (via the drive) on a laptop in my house. I passed through the drive through by creating a special vmdk (here - it's for "expert users only". ) and installed Arch on it by booting off the Arch 2011.08.19 iso and following the instructions. I do recall the installer complaining because /sbin/mkinitcpio was missing, so I copied over the one from the host (which is also an up-to-date Arch system). After that, everything worked and I was able to boot the drive within virtualbox.
Then I went and plugged it in to another laptop in the house and, surprisingly (for me at least), it got past GRUB. My joy was short-lived, because it failed just a bit later:
:: Running Hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents...done.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device 'Waiting 10 seconds
for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/[the uuid] ...
/dev/disk/by-uuid/(the uuid)'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[ramfs /]#
So I googled around for a while and plugged it back in to my computer, booted it up in virtualbox, and added "usb" to the HOOKS array right after udev in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Then I rebuilt the initramfs:
# mkinitcpio -p linux
So I plugged it back into the laptop, booted it, and got the same error.
Later, in an attempt to isolate the problem, I removed "sata" from HOOKS, ran the same mkinitcpio command again, and rebooted the VM. I got what looked like the same error as the one above. yay. So I guess the usb hook isn't being loaded or something like that. (I've since added the "sata" hook back and rebuilt the initramfs so I can mess around in the VM )
I've tried removing autodetect from HOOKS (saw that in some threads) and trying different USB ports on the laptop, but nothing seems to be working. I also checked to see if virtualbox was providing a bogus uuid or something, but the one it's specifying seems to be correct - I looked in my computer's /dev/disk/by-uuid and it matched.
Info on the drive (first partition is /boot, second is swap (derp!), third is /, and fourth is /home):
# sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdg
Disk /dev/sdg: 500.1 GB, 500107861504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773167 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00016b3d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdg1 * 63 208844 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdg2 208845 4417874 2104515 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdg3 4417875 209230559 102406342+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdg4 209230560 976768064 383768752+ 83 Linux
Screengrab of my VirtualBox storage setup (just for giggles):
My /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
# vim:set ft=sh
# MODULES
# The following modules are loaded before any boot hooks are
# run. Advanced users may wish to specify all system modules
# in this array. For instance:
# MODULES="piix ide_disk reiserfs"
MODULES=""
# BINARIES
# This setting includes any additional binaries a given user may
# wish into the CPIO image. This is run first, so it may be used to
# override the actual binaries used in a given hook.
# (Existing files are NOT overwritten if already added)
# BINARIES are dependency parsed, so you may safely ignore libraries
BINARIES=""
# FILES
# This setting is similar to BINARIES above, however, files are added
# as-is and are not parsed in any way. This is useful for config files.
# Some users may wish to include modprobe.conf for custom module options
# like so:
# FILES="/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf"
FILES=""
# HOOKS
# This is the most important setting in this file. The HOOKS control the
# modules and scripts added to the image, and what happens at boot time.
# Order is important, and it is recommended that you do not change the
# order in which HOOKS are added. Run 'mkinitcpio -H <hook name>' for
# help on a given hook.
# 'base' is _required_ unless you know precisely what you are doing.
# 'udev' is _required_ in order to automatically load modules
# 'filesystems' is _required_ unless you specify your fs modules in MODULES
# Examples:
## This setup specifies all modules in the MODULES setting above.
## No raid, lvm2, or encrypted root is needed.
# HOOKS="base"
## This setup will autodetect all modules for your system and should
## work as a sane default
# HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems"
## This is identical to the above, except the old ide subsystem is
## used for IDE devices instead of the new pata subsystem.
# HOOKS="base udev autodetect ide scsi sata filesystems"
## This setup will generate a 'full' image which supports most systems.
## No autodetection is done.
# HOOKS="base udev pata scsi sata usb filesystems"
## This setup assembles a pata mdadm array with an encrypted root FS.
## Note: See 'mkinitcpio -H mdadm' for more information on raid devices.
# HOOKS="base udev pata mdadm encrypt filesystems"
## This setup loads an lvm2 volume group on a usb device.
# HOOKS="base udev usb lvm2 filesystems"
# Tried this line instead -- didn't work either
#HOOKS="base udev usb autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems usbinput"
HOOKS="base udev usb sata filesystems"
# COMPRESSION
# Use this to compress the initramfs image. With kernels earlier than
# 2.6.30, only gzip is supported, which is also the default. Newer kernels
# support gzip, bzip2 and lzma. Kernels 2.6.38 and later support xz
# compression.
#COMPRESSION="gzip"
#COMPRESSION="bzip2"
#COMPRESSION="lzma"
#COMPRESSION="xz"
#COMPRESSION="lzop"
# COMPRESSION_OPTIONS
# Additional options for the compressor
#COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=""
My GRUB menu.lst:
# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader
# /boot/grub/menu.lst
# DEVICE NAME CONVERSIONS
# Linux Grub
# /dev/fd0 (fd0)
# /dev/sda (hd0)
# /dev/sdb2 (hd1,1)
# /dev/sda3 (hd0,2)
# FRAMEBUFFER RESOLUTION SETTINGS
# +-------------------------------------------------+
# | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
# ----+--------------------------------------------
# 256 | 0x301=769 0x303=771 0x305=773 0x307=775
# 32K | 0x310=784 0x313=787 0x316=790 0x319=793
# 64K | 0x311=785 0x314=788 0x317=791 0x31A=794
# 16M | 0x312=786 0x315=789 0x318=792 0x31B=795
# +-------------------------------------------------+
# for more details and different resolutions see
# https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Framebuffer_resolution
# general configuration:
timeout 5
default 0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/b4a677d0-cb0d-4acd-bb09-2dc2f4b9501f ro
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/b4a677d0-cb0d-4acd-bb09-2dc2f4b9501f ro
initrd /initramfs-linux-fallback.img
# (2) Windows
#title Windows
#rootnoverify (hd0,0)
#makeactive
#chainloader +1
Last edited by UncleNinja (2011-12-02 15:33:21)

Answer 1

UncleNinja wrote:
skunktrader wrote:https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/27385
Perfect! Thank you!
Would it be safe to copy over the version from HEAD into my mkinitcpio?
EDIT: nevermind, derp derp the package is updated
EDIT again: Actually, it's not.
I copied over the init_functions in HEAD into /lib/initcpio/init_functions and rebuilt the initramfs. It worked!
Thanks guys!
Last edited by UncleNinja (2011-12-02 15:35:20)