After updating 8.04.1 to 8.10, system halts at wating for root device.

[AJenbo]

On the first boot after updating 8.04.1 to 8.10 the system will no longer boot.

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/disk/by-uuid/8e6f36d5-a1c6-44f6-8697-9a5954b280af does not exist. Dr
 opping to a shell!

8.04.1 was a clean install.

I have 4 harddrives in my system and Ubuntu is installed on disk 1 (Vista on disk 0. 2 and 3 are data and backup).

Edit:
After some musking around i found that it was an issue with the changes done to the GRUB menu when the system was updated, sadly stuff like this seams to happen each time GRUB is updated for some reason. But this was the most severe case.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreprot.

Could you please attach the logs from the ugprade (in /var/log/dist-upgrade/*) so that we get a better idea what happend during the upgrade?

Thanks,
 Michael

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

Here is the full error that the sytesm gives

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Booting command-list

Root (hd1,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partiosion type 0x83
Kernel /Boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=8e6f36d5-a1c6-44f6-8697-9a595
4b280af ro quiet splash
   [Linux-bzImage. setup=0x3000, size=0x221ed0]
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic
   [Linux-initrd @ 0x7f71c000, 0x7c31fa bytes]

Loading, please wait...
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/disk/by-uuid/8e6f36d5-a1c6-44f6-8697-9a5954b280af does not exist. Dr
 opping to a shell!

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.10.2-1ubuntu7) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs) [ 58.092026] ata1:SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 63.120015] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 63.120111] ata1: reset failed, giving up

_
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The changes to menu.lst that made the system boot again looks like this.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=8e6f36d5-a1c6-44f6-8697-9a5954b280af ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic
quiet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't excatly see what the difference here it, but after changing the menu.lst the system booted up again (it still works), is it posible that there where othere changes in the menu.lst that solved the issue? The specific consol error that i have posted was booted from a command that i had edited (changed (hd3,0) to (hd1,0) to no avail).

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

I think i might have spoted the issue

Kernel /Boot/vmlinuz -> kernel /boot/vmlinuz (upper case B in boot)

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

After some furthere experimentation and usage of the system it is clear that this happens when ever i try to boot using the 2.6.27.11 kernel, if i use the 2.6.24.23 kernal (8.04.1) every thing works swimingly, the version number is the only difference in the two enteries on menu.lst. I have tried sudo apt-get purge linux-image-2.6.27-11-generic, sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.27-11-generic to no avail.

Memtest86+ an Vista changeloader+ works just fine as well.

Drive lay out

disk0 1 NTFS partision with all things VISTA
disk1 1 ext3 with all things ubuntu and grub, and 1 swap partision
disk2 1 NTFS partision with some shared data on it.
disk3 0 partisions

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

I tried uninstalling linux-image-2.6.24-23-generic and any local/legacy software.
Installed linux-image-2.6.27-9-generic, linux-image-2.6.27-9-generic and linux-image-2.6.25-2-386.

All 2.6.27-xx failes to boot with the same message.

2.6.25-2 was able to boot but not all the way to the desktop.

I have tried running 8.10 live cd inside qemu on the system and that worked resonably well.

As the system is no longer functioning proper i am going to reinstall it from a fresh 8.10 cd (silly that it happens just before 9.04), if you want any test data from my system it has to be with in a couple of dayes since i need it to do some danish translations for 9.04.

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

Setting rootdelay=4 solved the issue... The disk is a 10000RPM raptor connected via sata.

[AJenbo (ajenbo)]

Issue doesn't seam present in recent version.
8.10 no longer supported.