On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 07:45:19PM +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
Hello,
today I did a fresh install using the december release of the install media. Everything done 'to the book' (the install guide wiki page). Bootloader is syslinux.
When booting the freshly installed system, I get the syslinux menu, select Archlinux or fallback, things seem to be normal for a few seconds then everything stops. After some time I get a message that /dev/sda3 (which is the / partition) can't be found and I'm dropped into an emergency shell.
Use a persistent identifier such as a LABEL or UUID tag, rather than an unreliable kernel name. Not convinced this is the problem, but it's better to let /init figure out what device this really corresponds to in the kernel.
No LVM or RAID, just a single SATA disk with
sda1 = /boot (100M, ext2) sda2 = swap (2G) sda3 = / (~250G, ext4)
Assuming this is native SATA and not setup in compat mode, your image needs to contain the modules 'ahci', 'sd_mod', and 'ext4' (ignoring dependencies which I assume mkinitcpio found, added). Make sure the kernel version for the image matches whatever the installer gave you (3.6.10-1-ARCH if you stuck with [core]). 'lsinitcpio -a' will nicely lay all this out for you. You'll probably find your problem/solution here which will involve rebuilding the initramfs. Make sure /boot is mounted...
Partioning done with cfdisk.
Unrelated, I suggest you don't use cfdisk until util-linux 2.23. cfdisk still expects disk geometry to be measurable in cylinders, heads and sectors -- an idea that's been obsolete for nearly 2 decades. fdisk and parted are both better choices if MBR is sufficient. d