Hey all, I know somebody here has got to have info that may be of help.
If I'm totally missing something obvious here feel free to beat me to a
pulp - but anything is better than silence :) Since I didn't get any
responses last time I'll try one more time. <br>
<br>
Original message:<br>
<br>
Hello Everyone,<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp; I feel like the answer here should be
obvious, but either my google skills have deteriorated badly, I'm
missing the obvious, or I've just run into a strange problem (which I
doubt). <br>
<br>
I have a Gentoo install with the following filesystem layout (from fstab):<br>
<br>
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/dev/sda2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
/boot&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
ext3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;noatime&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
1 2</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/dev/sda6&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
/&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
jfs&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
noatime&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
1 1</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/dev/sda3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
none&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;swap&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;sw&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;0
0</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/dev/sda5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
/var&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;jfs&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
noatime&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
0 2</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/dev/sda7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
/home&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
jfs&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
noatime&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
0 2</span><br>
<br>

Things work fine under normal circumstances, however if the machine is
powered off uncleanly (power button, power failure, etc) it refuses to
boot. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the root partition
does not get checked prior to mounting. I have the following grub
stanza which boots the system. It includes the &quot;ro&quot; option which is
supposed to tell the kernel to mount the root partition read-only at
first to perform a fsck. <br>

<br>

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.12-r6<br>

root (hd0,1)<br>

kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.12-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/ram0
init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda6 udev hda=ide-scsi
hde=ide-scsi ro<br>

initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.12-gentoo-r6<br>

<br>

When booting this it basicly starts udev, then tries to mount
filesystems and says /dev/sda6 is not a valid partition and drops me
into busybox. 
<br>

<br>

The way I'm able to recover this is to boot to the live CD, fsck.jfs
/dev/sda6 and then reboot and the remaining filesystems fsck fine and
the system boots. However, one thing I notice is that once / is
unmounted unexpectedly, it cannot be mounted prior to an fsck (get
errors from mount). This seems like a bit of a chicken &amp; egg
situation.<br>

<br>

I can't believe this is a unique problem I've stumbled upon - does
anyone have either an obvious answer to this question or some examples
of a working gentoo install using jfs as the root partition (please, no
responses of &quot;yeah, works fine for me&quot; if you can resist).<br>

<br>

I'll happily provide more info as desired - but thought I'd start here. <br>
<span class="sg">
<br>
Aaron</span>