Jeffrey Ross wrote:
> On a Fedora Core 4 system I have a combination floppy drive(using the on
> board floppy controller) and a USB 2.0 card reader. If I have the USB
> cable connected for the Card reader portion of the drive and no flash
> card in the drive, the system will hang on bootup, specifically here:
>
> initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1656_FC4.img
> [Linux-initrd @ 0x2fc9200, 0x19df7a bytes]
>
> however inserting any flashcard and the system will boot normally.
>
> Disconnecting the flash drive is really not an option as the connector
> is internal to the case. Leaving a flashcard in the reader is a risky
> proposition in the event that the system needs to (or is forced to)
> reload and a card wasn't left in the reader.
>
> suggestions?
I'm guessing that the problem comes when the initrd attempts to mount
the real root system by filesystem label. The mount command must search
all disks for partitions in order to find one with the right label. I
imagine that the card reader is presented to the kernel in such a way
that there appears to be a device there, but the card reader won't
return any data until a card is physically inserted.
If I'm guessing correctly, you should be able to boot by device (e.g.
root=/dev/hda1) instead of by label (e.g. root=LABEL=/). You should be
able to test this hypothesis by pressing "e" on the Grub menu to edit a
kernel line, and make the appropriate change. (This will be temporary:
you'll have to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to make the change permanent.)
If you have any other filesystems automatically mounted from /etc/fstab,
you will probably get as far as where they're mounted, then the load
will freeze again. This will be the same problem, and the solution is to
edit /etc/fstab.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail address: james | Practically any car advert, for example, shows you
@westexe.demon.co.uk | that if you buy this car you will get so lost that you
| end up parked (well, no. The word here is "stuck") on
| a mountain in Monument Valley. -- Telsa Gwynne
