Udev - cannot mount root on kernel 2.6.33

[emas]

Hi, yesterday I updgraded my Ubuntu Lucyd Lynx from Beta 2 to Release Candidate (eg. run update-manager by hand, auto-update doesn't work), it found many packages to update and all run fine.
I upgraded to Lucyd Beta 2 last week from Ubuntu 9.10, Dell Vostro 1510 with NVidia card.
I was using a vanilla kernel 2.6.33.1 recompiled by excluding all unnecessary stuff, I also excluded initrd and compiled ext4 driver in the kernel. All was fine, both with Ubuntu 9.10 and with Lucyd Beta 2.

But this morning, at the first boot after the update, when I selected at Grub prompt my vanilla kernel after some seconds of Plymouth screen it appeared a message stating that root partition (/) cannot be mounted and asking if I want to solve the problem manually. I pressed "M" and a root console appeared. I saw above some messages that udev logged while trying to mount partitions, it said that root partition could not be mounted because "No such file or directory". At the console, no sda devices (!!) where found under /dev/. My home directory was not present, /home was empty, no hidden files where present. My home directory is also encrypted.
I attach my fstab.
I don't know what else to attach, because no log files were generated, no messages, no syslog, no kernel log.

What's happened with udev/udevd? Why it cannot mount my partitions anymore? And why, if it said "cannot mount / partition", I was presented with a root console with all my hard drive (except home directories)?
I think that there is some problem with that kernel, maybe because of the lack of initrd.
If I choose Ubuntu 2.6.32 default kernel, with initrd support, all is fine, system is up and running.

I then tried recompiling vanilla 2.6.33.1 including initrd, the compilation went fine (make-kpkg), deb packages where generated, but when I run dkpg -i to install them NO initrd image was generated in /boot, is that normal? Am I forgetting something?
I will try recompiling "Gentoo-way" generating initrd image.

Let me know if you need something else.

[Rickard Närström (riccetn)]

If you don't have /dev/sda it usually means you are missing drivers for your hdd controller. The file system you fall back to when mounting of root fail is the file system on the initrd.

I have converted this to a question as you are using custom kernels. If you have the same problems with default kernels you can convert it back to a bug.

[Krisztian Papp (hadace)]

hi,

same here

my 2.6.33.2 custom kernel worked fine with lucid when i first booted it two weeks ago, meanwhile i upgraded frequently the updates (without reboots, so i had an uptime of two weeks).

yesterday rebooted to the "new" 2.6.33.3 and encountered this problem.

udevd: failed to create queue file: No such file or directory
init: udev main process terminated with status 1
init: udev main process ended, respawning
init: udevmonitor main process terminated with status 2
udevadm: error sending message: Connection refused
(then some plymouth and mountall errormessages)

same errors when i load the previously used 2.6.33.2, or the more older 2.6.32.6 vanilla kernels.
with the ubuntu-generic kernel is all right, but my own config is (was) faster ;) so i would use that again.

maybe something required is missing from our kernel that udev needs from now, or is this a simple udev bug?
please let me know,
thank you :)

[Krisztian Papp (hadace)]

the required kernel options are:

Device Drivers --->
 Generic Driver Options --->
  [*] Create a kernel maintained /dev tmpfs (EXPERIMENTAL)
  [*] Automount devtmpfs at /dev

[emas (emas80spam)]

Great!
I didn't have time in the last few days to make trial, last week I simply made it work because I needed it for my job.
I will try with your suggestions, thanks!