On Wed, 20 May 1998, Chuck Colht wrote:
> I'm installing RH4.2 on a pentium, but can't get past the first boot after
> the installation. Either the system hangs before LILO appears, or it boots
> until the root partition is mounted read only and then says:
>
> Unable to open an initial console
>
> What does this mean?
That error comes from init/main.c when it can't open /dev/tty1 in
read/write mode. I would guess that the device files were not installed.
If you haven't already gotten this machine up and running, try booting
from a rescue disk, mounting that partition, and checking the /dev
directory. The specific code in the 2.0.32 kernel is:
if ((open("/dev/tty1",O_RDWR,0) < 0) &&
(open("/dev/ttyS0",O_RDWR,0) < 0))
printk("Unable to open an initial console.\n");
Basically, if it fails to open /dev/tty1, it tries /dev/ttyS0 before
returning the error. This is for serial console stuff, but the fact is
that it failed on both devices. Missing device files is the only
explanation that I can think of.
/* Brian Rogers, professional geek, coffee achiever */
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