I keep ruining stuff!

[83mercedes]

Man this is fun!

I have determined that given the opportunity, I can wreck ANY system!

Anyway this time I had Debian Sid up and running perfectly, (and not the Knoppix HD install.) This one I installed from a sarge netinst cd.

So things are going very well, I even 'rolled my own' kernel-2.6.4 and had it working, Nvida and all!!

Then I decide to re-compile that kernel, to add built-in ieee1394 support, and went to install it, and it failed with:

/usr/sbin/mkinitrd: /dev/fd does not exist, mkinitrd failed.

 

So I figure, oh well, it will still boot off the old kernel, right?

Nope.It wont boot at all.

Now I cannot install ANY kernel, 2.4, 2.6, or anything, they all fail with that same error above.

I know I'm asking a lot, but how the heck do I get out of this?

(I have tried downgrading initrd-tools and kernel-package).No luck.

(I hope DOlson don't see this!!!)

[jlc]

when you say you have tried downgradeing stuff, does that mean you can boot into something? Or just the live cd?

[83mercedes]

Hey!

No, I can't boot to the hard disk, I am booting using a knoppix CD.

After chrooting and mounting the hard disk, I can "try" to install a kernel, and thats where I am.

Thanks.

[jlc]

Do you really need to run mkinitrd? I rarely ever use initial ram disk unless i'm using bloated distro, your using debian so you shouldn't have to use that?

 

chroot, grab your self a kernel and rebuild it small like.

 

any chance you have old config's in /boot or under /usr/src/oldkernels?

 

might be hidden so

 

ls -a

 

to look for old .config's

[83mercedes]

Apparently Yes, I do have to use initrd when building the kernel, since I tried a build without it, and it failed.

Once I added --initrd, the next time it worked great.

I have even tried installing prebuilt kernel-images, and the error is the same.

[jlc]

What is the error you are getting when you boot up into any kernel, is it the same error?

 

whats in your /boot

 

# ls -la /boot

 

whats in your lilo/grub config file?

[aru]

I'm in a hurry right now and I can't do a deep reading of the thread, but I hope this might help you.

 

The debian kernels are special. The vanilla kernels aren't the same as the debian ones. So if you are trying to compile a vanilla kernel and then make the initrd image you'll get into troubles when you'll try to boot because the initrd image wont work right. I'm not sure if this is your problem or not, but by this quick reading is what it seems to me. You can either patch the vanilla kernel with the appropiate debian patch or easier, do:

 

~# apt-get install genromfs
<...>
~# vi /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf
<edit the MKIMAGE parameter, this is what I have>
# Command to generate the initrd image.
MKIMAGE='mkcramfs %s %s > /dev/null'        # para debian kernels
#MKIMAGE='genromfs -d %s -f %s > /dev/null' # para vanilla kernels 
<...>

so coment and uncomment the MKIMAGE parameter in function of what kind of kernel do you want to compile, mkcramfs for debian kernels, and genromfs for vanilla plain kernels.

 

then at late stage create the initrd.img as usual

mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-[KERNE-ID] /lib/modules/[KERNEL-ID]/

 

HTH and sorry if I'm wrong, but I guess I'm not ;)

Edited April 7, 2004 by aru

[Guest joesmack]

aru: you hit the nail on the head for my problem

 

However i still get /usr/sbin/mkinitrd: /dev/fd does not exist after editing that file

 

What happend is like you said... I tried to install a vanilla kernel after installing a debian kernel and i tried to do it the same way (without editing /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf). It seemed fine but when I booted it gave me /lib/modules/2.6.5 not found for any modules and then kernel panic caused by not finding /dev/console.

 

So now that I am in this state, is there a way out of it?

 

i can't use mkinitrd on my vanilla kernel or my debian kernel