I'm running Mepis Debian updated to sid and have installed the latest Aptosid kernel to try out but problems. Bootup works as normal up to and including entering the user name and password. Looks like it's going to start x desktop but fails with this error (Cannot enter home directory using /.) ... if I login as root it will boot into the desktop but not as user. Anyone know how to fix this?. Thanks in advance for any assistance. I should also mention pertaining to this post and issue that I have 2 harddrives in my system and both are bootable (have a root and home partition on them). The main drive is sda and the second is hda. Whenever grub updated itself it always grabs the boot profile from hda and will not boot... I have to go in and manually change it to point to sda for boot. Root is on the first partition on both drives or was till yesterday when I completely deleted the root partition from hda in attempts to correct the grub problem.
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you can't use /hda or /sda in grub or in fstab, period.

new kernels all use libata, which doesn't support hdx type disk names.

To solve this you must use either disk labels or disk uuids in both grub and in fstab.

root does not use /home, which is why root can login.
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My problem is that I don't know how to apply what you are telling me. The bottom section of my boot/grub/menu.lst has uuids for each of my installed kernels but if I try to boot into the aptosid kernel I get the error message... Is there a procedure or cli option I can use to get everything (fstab & menu.lst,etc) setup using UUID correctly?, or a reference I can follow to do it manually?. Thanks
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I can't teach you how to fix this, this is why I do not recommend Mepis to people, they have failed to update their stuff to support current methods, and teaching people how to fix fstab isn't something that's scalable.

Mepis also uses some weird fstab generator which isn't debian standard, and that's why I restrict my support of mepis issues.

Ask antix guys from mepis, they know all about this problem since antix uses new Debian for its packages, and newer kernels.
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Thanks, could you expand a bit on what you are saying about mepis. I ask because I have always felt some things in mepis screw the works when trying to run newer kernels etc. I'm having poor luck with both aptosid and liquorix kernels with mepis and would rather eliminate the REAL problem if it yields me a better desktop experience.
Link to my current menu.lst> paste.debian.net/97823/
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no, sorry, I don't want to spend time on Mepis, it was a great idea in its day but Warren has not put the time/energy out to keep its core systems in sync with Debian, I see this all over, their legacy xorg.conf methods, their bad fstab generator, their hacked menu.lst file that requires a redo to install standard debian compliant kernels.

I recommend LDME, who are doing a very good job in keeping Mint Debian in harmony with Debian core methods.
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hi



I can help you with that

1) what is the linux format that you used?

ext2/3/4 xfs reiserfs jfs etc?

2) leaping ahead your kernel line will change to uuid or label like this

kernel /boot/vmlinuz(version) root=UUID=uuidstring

or

kernel /boot/vmlinuz(version) root=LABEL=labelname

3) you can find out UUID from running command



you can find out your label for ext2/3/ and I assume 4 with

linux.die.net/man/8/e2label
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oops forgot to ask if mepis is grub or grub2

grub uses kernel at start while grub2 uses linux

label is also discussed in this thread

techpatterns.com/forums/about1575.html
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