"Gave up waiting for root device"

**schragge** · March 5th, 2013

Well, this is what I get on my system (Debian wheezy):

Code:

$ uname -a
Linux infa64imgs 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.35-2 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ zcat /boot/initrd.img-`uname -r`|cpio -it|egrep '/(scsi/[lms]|fusion/)'|sort
60856 blocks
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptbase.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptfc.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptsas.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptscsih.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptspi.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libfc
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libfc/libfc.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libiscsi.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libiscsi_tcp.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libsas
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libsas/libsas.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/libsrp.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/lpfc
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/lpfc/lpfc.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid/megaraid_mbox.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid/megaraid_mm.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid/megaraid_sas.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mpt2sas
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mpt2sas/mpt2sas.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvsas
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvsas/mvsas.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvumi.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_debug.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_mod.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_tgt.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_fc.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_iscsi.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_sas.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_spi.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_srp.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_wait_scan.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/sd_mod.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/ses.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/sg.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/sr_mod.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/stex.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/st.ko
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/sym53c8xx_2
lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/sym53c8xx_2/sym53c8xx.ko

**matt_symes** · March 5th, 2013

Hi

At the busy box prompt, does pressing

Code:

ctrl + d

continue the boot cycle ?

Kind regards

**TheAdmiralty** · March 6th, 2013

Just got back; I'll be sure to read through everything that was posted and keep you updated.

UPDATE:

I just ran into an IDE DVD reader; I'm going to burn several different distros and see if I have any luck with it.

**TheAdmiralty** · March 7th, 2013

It boots.

I'll describe what I did, because it seems to have really been an issue of trying to do something the LiveOS wasn't intended to do.

I completely gutted the hard drive bays on this, and removed the Fujitsu drive entirely. I then shifted the remaining two Cheetah drives upward and jumped them to ID0 and ID1. Secondly, I added an IDE DVD-ROM drive and booted it off of a DVD burnt with Zorin. Booted into the Installation menu and installed on the first drive.

On restart, it passed the default GRUB menu, went through the splash screen, and stopped at BusyBox. [ctrl] + [d] caused it to repeat itself. I rebooted, and changed the GRUB boot line to include root=/dev/sda1 noapic rootdelay=120

It actually booted to the desktop.

This is just my relatively uneducated assumption, but it would appear that it isn't possible to get a reliable installation from a LiveOS fron IDE, over an LSI controller, and onto a SCSI drive.
I still have problems, but they're nothing software related, or fixable at the moment (IE, not enough graphical power). I'll go try it again to make sure that wasn't a fluke. As long as it's repeatable, I'll go edit the GRUB config and make it permanent; will also probably set it to skip over the GRUB delay altogether if possible.