Debian says: "Alert! ..."

M

mip0

Geek Trainee
I've just installed Debian 5.0 but now I can't start the computer. This is what it says when I try to start up:
"(...)
Volume group "(hostname)" not found
Volume group "(hostname)" not found
done.
Begin: Waiting for root file system ... done.
Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
- Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! /dev/mapper/(Hostname)-root does not exist. Dropping to a shell!


BusyBox v1.10.2 (Debian 1:1.10.2-2) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
(initramfs)"
Please help!
Thanks!
 
in shell try this....
vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
Click to expand...
.... and post the result of the uncommented rows.

For example mine says -

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/hda2 ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686
 
Sorry... I thought that the end result of the boot process was the Shell. Did I get it wrong? If you cannot even start a shell, personally I would start over, this time paying careful attention to your installation partitions and boot loader location.

For example - when hda is the is set as the first drive to boot from
hda1 - Swap
hda2 - /
hda3 - /home

The installer will automatically know where the boot loader needs to go, unless you have asigned a special partition for it. In any case the loader has to be installed to the first drive in the boot order...

Please post again if this is still not helpful...
 
This is what it looks like, this is what I do, this is what happens as I though I was in shell:

  1. (initramfs) _
  2. (initramfs) vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
  3. /bin/sh: vim: not found
    (initramfs) _

I don't know if this is of any value but if I type ls I get:
((initramfs) ls (+RETURN))
bin dev init proc sbin sys var
conf etc lib root scripts tmp

I'll wait for you (or any one else who knows what to do) before I do anything, like reinstalling the OS which you mentioned.
 
Sorry my friend...
I never came across such a case but I am guessing that this issue is due to wrong partition allocation and/or the boot loader being installed to the wrong place thus the PC cannot find where to boot from. As I mentioned earlier, personally, I would start over... meaning re-install.
 
personally i use deby & install using 4 partitions

1: /boot - the only primary partition, 100Mb, hda1
2: / (root) - secondary / logical partition <4Gb, hda5
3: /home - logical partition <2Gb, hda6
4: swap - logical 2Gb hda7

good luck :beer:
 
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