kernel 2.6.24-17: boot hangs with "waiting for root file system"

[Tony Green]

Binary package hint: linux-image

Running Kubuntu 8.04.

After installing today's updates, I cannot boot my system with the newly installed kernel (2.6.24-17) which hangs with a message "waiting for root file system".

I can see that previous bugs have been raised for this problem in other kernel versions, but as this is a new version I am opening a new bug.

Some of the previous bugs give the impression that this might have been related to multi-core processors, but I only have a single core. (Not sure why I've got an SMP kernel, as I thought this was meant for multi-core CPUs.)

When the boot finally gives up trying to mount the root file system, it drops into a limited shell. Looking in /dev in this shell, I can see no /dev/hd? , /dev/sd? or even /dev/disk, which seems to explain why no device can be found to mount.

As I can't mount anything to write logs to, I can only supply a limited amount of what's been requested in previous instances of this, viz:

uname -a
Linux (none) 2.6.24-17-generic #1 SMP Thu May 1 UTC 2008 X86_64 unknown

cat /proc/version_signature
Signature Ubuntu 2.6.24-17.31-generic.

I have attached output from lspci -vvn, run from the previous kernel.

I am able to work around this problem, as I can still boot from the old kernel.

[Tony Green (ubuntu-beermad-deactivatedaccount)]

Solved!

The problem appears to have been because update-initramfs failed when installing the new kernel.
This was because I'd had issues with the udev rules that were installed after upgrading to 8.04 so I'd replaced /etc/udev/rules.d with my backup.

Replacing the necessary files and running "update-initramfs -k 2.6.24-17-generic -c" solved the problem.

Evidently I need to investigate the issues I have with udev rules and raise a bug for them instead.

[®om (rom1v)]

Same problem, if in my /etc/hosts, I put my computer name on 127.0.0.1 :

$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost rom-laptop
#127.0.1.1 rom-laptop

it resolves the problem.