[Nix-dev] Problems booting

[Emil Rangden]

Rommel Martinez <rmm <at> meta.ph> writes:

> 
> I fetched http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/latest-iso-graphical-x86_64-linux, 
which, at the time of download, pointed to nixos-graphical-0.2pre4454_979117b-
789154b-x86_64-linux.iso. I wanted to install it from a USB flash drive, so I 
followed the methods described 
at http://nixos.org/wiki/Installing_NixOS_from_a_USB_stick.
> 
> However, none of them worked. With the second method (syslinux), I only got a 
blinking cursor, then it went on to proceed to the next boot device. With the 
first method, the following message appeared on the screen:
> 
> waiting for device /dev/root to appear.......................
> 
> momunting /dev/root on /...
> 
> mount: mounting /dev/root on /mnt-root/ failed: No such file or directory
> 
> An error occured in stage 1 of the boot process, which must mount the
> 
> root filesystem on `/mnt-root' and then start stage 2.  Press one
> of the following keys:
> 
>   r) to reboot immediately
> 
>   8) to ignore the error and continue
> 

I am having the same problem. For me the problem does not appear with 
older nixos versions (I tried 0.1-pre26901-x86-64, that works). 
>From reading about similar problems on other distributions it seems
udev used to symlink the booting device to /dev/root but it is not
doing that anymore. That seems like a reasonable explanation to me
but I know almost nothing about the booting process or udev, so I might 
be completely off.