Upstream of live-initramfs added my findiso code and we're using blkid 
nowadays, so closing this issue. Please feel free to reopen this bugreport if 
you encounter any further problems.

Thanks!

regards,
-mika-

On Monday 09 November 2009 18:50:33 Christoph Biedl wrote:

> As you're planning to abandon vol_id at all, and since this scenario
> is not very common at all:  I suggest to close this ticket as wontfix.
> In the unlikely situation somebody else encounters this problem in the
> remaining time until the next grml release, the search engines should
> lead him to this ticket.

I think its better to let the ticket stay open until we switched over to 
blkid and then close it as we want to fix-it.

Ulrich

Michael Prokop wrote...

> This one is related to http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue744 (switch
> from vol_id to blkid), I'm just not yet sure where we should place
> the hint about the currently possible failure of vol_id.

As you're planning to abandon vol_id at all, and since this scenario
is not very common at all:  I suggest to close this ticket as wontfix.
In the unlikely situation somebody else encounters this problem in the
remaining time until the next grml release, the search engines should
lead him to this ticket.

    Christoph

This one is related to http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue744 (switch from vol_id to 
blkid), I'm just not yet sure where we should place the hint about the 
currently possible failure of vol_id.

Severity: minor

Hi,

booting grml from hard disk using findiso= failed mysteriously on some
computers: The initrd could not locate the ISO image and therefore
dropped me into the (very) restricted shell.  The same configuration
and file layout worked like a charme on other computers.

With the help of #grml I found the reason as follows:
* The file system of that partition (here: /dev/sda1) is ext[23].
* The very first sector contains a boot sector, installed by
  (perhaps some old version of) grub.

Then, "/lib/udev/vol_id /dev/sda1" returns, at least sometimes
(...)
ID_FS_TYPE=vfat
(...)
or fails to identify the device at all.

Assuming grml's initrd does the same, this explains the error.

Solution: Clear out that sector, e.g. doing
| dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=1 of=/dev/sda1
and make sure your boot loader is still intact, in case of doubt:
Re-install it, preferrably on /dev/sda.

Could you please drop an according caveat in the documentation? That
would have saved a lot of frustration for me.

Suggestion:

Caveat (regarding the findiso boot option): 
Under certain circumstances grml fails to identify the partition for
the grml .iso file, thus fails to boot after the "Searching for GRML
file" message. This may happen if the filesystem where the .iso file
is stored, is ext2 or ext3. If you're sure all file names are correct
etc., please check whether "/lib/udev/vol_id <device>" actually
returns that filesystem.

Regards,
    Christoph