# [SOLVED] No boot, /dev/hd?? not populated

## miraceti

I have done a big update after 3 month of being out of home. Everything went OK but the machine does not boot up anymore. It cannot remount my root filesystem  (/dev/hdc1) for rw. I have noticed that hd?? devices are not populated in /dev at all. I don't know exactly why.

I would like to repair the system, of course. Can anybody help me, please? I will try to provide all information I will be able to get. I have got quite an old kernel (2.6.28) installed (because of drivers I needed for a certain unimportant device). It should be OK to use 2.6.34 if I manage to compile it. I just don't know where to start.

Thank you.Last edited by miraceti on Wed Aug 04, 2010 11:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

----------

## ssteinberg

emerged new udev?

Switch to the new libata using sata device names (/dev/sdx). Check kernel configs, it is there.

----------

## miraceti

 *ssteinberg wrote:*   

> emerged new udev?
> 
> Switch to the new libata using sata device names (/dev/sdx). Check kernel configs, it is there.

 

Yep. Probably new udev.

But how to do that? I need to compile a new kernel, I guess. I cannot do it when the system has not booted up and I have not write access to my disc. Any workaround?

----------

## krinn

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-829329-highlight-dev+sda+missing.html

----------

## NeddySeagoon

miraceti,

libata migration guide

There seems to be some anecdotal evidence that you need to rebuild hal too.  

```
emerge -1 hal
```

See the rest of the thread

----------

## miraceti

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> miraceti,
> 
> libata migration guide
> 
> There seems to be some anecdotal evidence that you need to rebuild hal too.  
> ...

 

It seems to be valuable. I downloaded Gentoo Ten Live DVD 10.1 but I am stucked on https://bugs.gentoo.org/288868 . It seems the mdev hangs up because some module was loaded. When I uses "nodetect" option, detection is skipped and mdev starts. But there is no cdrom device for booting in this, of course. I assume it would help to choose manually the modules I need but I have no idea which ones.

How can I fix this?

I have an MSI K7N420 Pro nForce Motherboard. I do not need anything else to do with the Live DVD than boot and fix the original problem. That means I do not probably need USB, sound, graphics (VESA must be enough) to be working.

----------

## idella4

miraceti,

From your description it seems you can't do anything.  Is the 10.1 dvd usable or not?

What do you have working such as the system with which you can post?, a windows, another linux??

Can you not use the kernel config from the former 2.6.28 to cite which devices need addressing?

----------

## NeddySeagoon

miraceti,

After the eror, you should see a message like Press Ctrl-D to continue or give the root password for maintainece.

At that message, give the root password , then 

```
mount -o rw,remount /
```

which will give you read write access to /

Depending on your partition layout, that may or may not be be enough to rebuild things to fix the issue.

If you need more /dev nodes making them manually with mknod may be enough, the partitions may be behind the new hand made nodes.

When you remake your kernel be sure that   

```
[ ] enable deprecated sysfs features to support old userspace tools
```

is off and any other deprecated sysfs features are off too. udev needs those off to work.

----------

## miraceti

I managed to boot up the LiveCD 2008. I have rebuilt my old kernel with the settings recommended in https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6362608.html#6362608 , have rebuilt hal package and voila! It is booting.

So, thank you very much, NeddySeagoon. We can close this case.

I just would like to know why I missed the information about needed changes in kernel configuration. And, of course, why DVD Live 10.1 and CD install-x86-minimal-20100216.iso does not work on my PC. This should be definitevely fixed.

----------

## idella4

Neddy's done it again, as usual.  Can you put [solved] in your thread title..

----------

