Comment 3 for bug 1155512

Issue #1: any chance of a console log? Sounds like the image isn't appropriate. You could try booting a regular instance, attaching that volume to the instance and mounting it, to see if it does indeed have a file system (whatever about a partition table and a boot block).

Issue #2: there's nothing in the code to prevent you doing what you did, but whether that's a bug or a feature is another story. We (HPCS) don't allow people to create instances from volumes using the web interface, unless the volume has data in the 'volume_glance_metadata' table. You can still use the CLI to do what you did, because you may have created the volume in some other way, possibly building the partition data and boot block by hand, while attached as a non-root device to another instance.