[ale] Converting to RAID5 root

[Keith Hopkins]

Chris Woodfield wrote:
> Yeah, I realized I wrote this in a bit of haste. Let me explain the  
> setup more clearly:
>
> I initially installed my linux distro on a regular ATA drive,  
> standard debian 3.0 defaults (root at /dev/hda1, /home on /dev/hda5).
>
> I then added three SATA drives to the system, with the intent of  
> migrating the system over to the raid array. GRUB sees these as (hd2)  
> through (hd4). The libata driver names then /dev/sda - /dev/sdc.
>
> I set up the following arrays on the three drives:
>
> md0 - sda1, sdb2 - RAID 1 array to load kernel, will mount as /boot.
> md1 - sda5, sdb5, sdc5 - RAID5 array to mount as /
> md2 - sda6, sdb6, sdc6 - RAID5 array hosting LVM partitions
>
> I solved the kernel panic issue already - I had incorrectly assumed  
> that the initrd image generated by make-kpkg would load the proper  
> SATA modules and autodetect my SATA drives. It didn't. So I commented  
> the initrd out of menu.lst, compiled libata and RAID support into the  
> kernel directly, and rebooted.
>
> The system now autodetects the arrays, and mounts /dev/md1 as the  
> root partition, but then bombs with this error immediately after  
> mounting /dev/md1 :
>
> "Warning: could not open inital console"
>
> And I'm clueless, again.
>
> Any ideas on that one?
>
> -C
>   
You're probably missing /dev/console.  Is your system using "udev"?  
Udev is usually started from initrd, which you said you commented out.

Alternately, if you have a static /dev, you can create

crw-------  1 root root 5, 1 Mar  6 07:17 /dev/console

with mknod.

--
 From the land downunder,
  Keith