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

[Pascal de Bruijn]

On Sun, 2006-07-16 at 17:32 -0700, William M. Brack wrote:
> 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
> 

Thankyou for your reply.

But my mistake was rather silly, I unpacked the voyage tarball as a
normal user, and because of that, the device files didn't  get created
because a normal user doesn't have permission to do that.

I untarred the tarball as root, and reinstalled the CF card, now it
works just fine.

Regards,
Pascal de Bruijn

-- 
http://blog.pcode.nl/
http://del.icio.us/pmjdebruijn/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmjdebruijn/