Ubuntu losing root filesystem on first boot

[Eric "Shubes"]

der.hans wrote:
> Am 15. Nov, 2006 schwätzte eric© so:
> 
>> Installed Xubuntu 6.06 on my Thinkpad the other day, everything seemed
>> to be
>> OK until I attempted to install the xmms-alarm package.  Wouldn't even
>> download, altho I could still browse the net.  In typical longterm
>> Windows
>> user fashion, I just figured it needed a reboot.  Did so, and it wouldn't
>> boot afterwards, hanging on the "mounting root file system", and went to
>> "waiting for root file system" for a few minutes, and eventually
>> telling me
>> that /dev/hde1 could not be found.  Attemped a reinstall of the OS,
>> and it
>> refused to install to the drive, giving some error that I can't recall
>> now.
>> Assumed bad drive (just bought it about 6 hours prior).  Fry's
>> exchanged it
>> out no problem, and this time around I chose Ubuntu 6.06.  Same thing,
>> everything seemed to be OK until I rebooted, and it fails attempting to
>> mount the root file system, still trying to load on /dev/hde1.  It
>> drops me
>> into a shell eventually, where I checked the /dev folder, and found that
>> niether hde nor hde1 exists. I tried creating the folder, still hung
>> (altho
>> i really didn't expect that to work).
> 
> /dev/hde should be an extra controller.
> 
> Do you have on board SATA? Do you have a PCI SATA controller?

I have an old PII-266 w/a  PCI IDE controller (for larger, faster IDE
drives) that I had Fedora working on just fine. It's running CentOS now and
is my mail and web server (light load but it handles it nicely).

I'm not suggesting you change distros. I can't imagine why *ubuntu wouldn't
handle it.

> If you boot a Live CD what device is the disk on? What's in the installed
> /etc/fstab?

This is a good idea (of course), booting from a Live CD and poking around.

> I believe the shell you're getting is mostly meant for debugging the
> kernel. It's been a while since I've looked at it.
> 
> ciao,
> 
> der.hans
> 


-- 
-Eric 'shubes'