On Tuesday 07 July 2009 15:26:54 Kelly Clowers wrote: > Is there a way to get a shell inside the initramfs, to > look around?
You can boot with "break=mount" as a kernel option, it will drop you into a busybox shell just before mounting the root directory. The initramfs environment doesn't inherit environment variables from the boot scripts, but you can browse the file system and run the scripts and stuff. I've run into similar problems when the initramfs didn't include the right driver module for the disk drive -- the result is that the BIOS can see the drive, and GRUB can see it, but the kernel can't -- you get symptoms similar to what you describe, and it's also consistent with the LiveCD working, as it presumably has a full kernel. The solution in that case is to get the right module into the initramfs, most simply by just listing it by name in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and rebuilding the initramfs. I haven't mentioned it because it doesn't make sense in your case -- you're restoring an RMA'd drive on an old box, where presumably the motherboard SATA device hasn't changed, so the initramfs you restored from back-up should work, plus you said you rebuilt the initramfs several times. The other way to investigate the initramfs, incidentally, is to just unpack it somehwere -- it's a cpio archive, you can google for instructions. -- A. -- Andrew Reid / rei...@bellatlantic.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org