Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Installation problems

[Mike Williams <mike@gaima.co.uk>]

On Saturday 14 July 2007 18:53:27 Hendrik Boom wrote:
> Very interesting.  It gets further with the dolvm2 pernel option (I
> specified udev first for good measure, as indicated in the howto, and it
> got further.  However, it still fails to handle
> /dev/mapper/lovesong-gentoo properly.  fsck complains about it, and I get
> to type "shell" for a shell.  There I find that
> /dev/mapper/lovesong-mapper does not exost (as testified by ls), but that
> it is nonetheless mounted on / (as testified by mount).

OK, that's not exactly what I expected to happen, but I guess the initrd/ramfs 
has the same udev setup as the full system so either the udev and 
the "proper" LVM path could be used.
I prefer using the "proper" LVM paths, as early udevs won't create the other 
nodes and later ones may also not do so (udev is pretty stable now, so I 
realise it's highly unlikely).

udev path == /dev/mapper/VG-LV
"proper" LVM path == /dev/VG/LV

> This suggests that (a) it was mounted, and (b) something else was mounted
> over the path to /dev/mapper/lovesong-mapper afterward.  So something is
> clearly finding /dev/lovesong/mapper, and then making it inaccessible.

a and b, the initrd/ramfs is mounted as / from ram by the kernel after it's 
booted, the initrd/ramfs does it's stuff, then "pivots" the / device to the 
real_root device on the kernel command line.
The / device you specify in fstab is never actually mounted, as to read it / 
needs to be mounted, so the kernel or initrd/ramfs does it based on the 
kernel arguements.
As a workaround you can make checkfs not attempt an fsck on the / device. In 
fstab set the final column on the / entry to 0, it's almost certainly 1. This 
number defines the order in which devices are fsck'd, 0 means don't do 
anything.

> By the way, I didn't find a /dev/VG/ directory either.

No /dev/lovesong/ ? Assuming your VolumeGroup is actually called lovesong.

-- 
Mike Williams
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