[Voyage-linux] Warning: unable to open an initial console.

[William M. Brack]

Pascal de Bruijn wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-07-14 at 18:52 -0400, Noah Dain wrote:
>> On 7/14/06, Pascal de Bruijn <pmjdebruijn at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > After booting the first time, I got this message:
>> >
>> > Warning: unable to open an initial console.
>> >
>> > I have no clue what could cause this. Has anybody already experienced
>> > this? How can I fix it?
>> >
>> > I'm working with a PC-Engines WRAP board.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Pascal de Bruijn
>> > --
>> > http://blog.pcode.nl/
>> > http://del.icio.us/pmjdebruijn/
>> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmjdebruijn/
>> >
>>
>> the only time i've seen this is when something is wrong with the boot
>> configuration, ie. the kernel is passed the wrong root filesystem
>> parameter, and the kernel can't find /dev
>>
>>
>
> Aha,
>
> Indeed:
>
> pmjdebruijn at agamemnon:/media/root/dev$ ls -l ttyS0
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 pmjdebruijn pmjdebruijn 13 2006-07-14 10:57 ttyS0
> -> /rw/dev/ttyS0
> pmjdebruijn at agamemnon:/media/root/dev$
>
> The ttyS0 is a symlink, to a file which doesn't exist. My /rw is totally
> empty. So /dev contains broken symlinks.
>
> That will most likely be the issue.
>
> Any clue on how to fix that?
> Did anything go wrong with my installation?
>
> Regards,
> Pascal de Bruijn
>
> --
> http://blog.pcode.nl/
> http://del.icio.us/pmjdebruijn/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmjdebruijn/

No, you are confused.  The symlink is to /rw/dev, and during bootstrap
files from /ro are copied over to /rw (see /etc/init.d/mountall.sh, or
somewhere around there).  That's not your problem.

The missing "initial console" is most likely due to one of two things:
  1) you have compiled a kernel without specifying support for console on
a serial terminal, or
  2) your bootstrap parameter in your Lilo or Grub control file is
missing the kernel parameter "console=/dev/ttyS0,19200n8"

Bill