Cannot boot to compiled kernel

[Daniel Bokser]

> On Nov 3, 2016, at 11:22 AM, Matias Mucciolo <mmucciolo at suteba.org.ar> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday 03 November 2016 00:56:21 Daniel. wrote:
>> 2016-11-02 9:27 GMT-02:00 Quentin Lambert <lambert.quentin at gmail.com>:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> On 11/02/2016 12:05 PM, Daniel Bokser wrote:
>>>> Now I am thrown into the recovery shell with an 'Unable to find root
>>> device /dev/sdc2' (my SSD).
>>>> The real strange thing is that the (PS/2) keyboard doesn't work, so I
>>> can't even run commands.
>>>> Tried also USB keyboard to no avail.
>>>> I also have a bunch of "Unknown symbol" errors from scsi_mod which fill
>>> most of the screen.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm thinking the RAM disk is bad, but not sure. No amount of Google-fu
>>> was able to help me out with this one.
>>>> 
>>> I had a similar problem, check to see if the RAM is ok but the problem
>>> might be due to something else.
>>> 
>>> I was able to make it work thanks to this e-mail:
>>> 
>>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/10/19/271
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I changed to
>>> 
>>> CONFIG_MODVERSIONS=n
>>> 
>>> But naively applying the patches mentioned in the e-mail did not work for
>>> me
>>> and I haven't had the time to look further into the problem and give
>>> relevant
>>> feedback to the thread.
>>> 
>>> Quentin
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Kernelnewbies mailing list
>>> Kernelnewbies at kernelnewbies.org
>>> https://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I would suggest you to compile ssd and ps2 keyboard drivers built in, so
>> even if some goes wrong on initrd you may still mount rootfs and have
>> keyboard working. The "Unknown symbol" may mean that something was wrong in
>> kernel compilation.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> -- 
>> *"Do or do not. There is no try"*
>>  *Yoda Master*
> 
> 
> also the module for the filesystem you use in root part.
> 
> Matias
> 
> 

Thanks everyone!  So I compiled keyboard, SATA, and BTRFS drivers in and was able to get further, but it looks like it had trouble starting up LXDE (it was repeatedly starting and stopping LXDE).  Booting up in single user mode, I was able to get a prompt.  I attempted startx but it failed.  I looked and it looked like it was attempting to use the Nvidia modules, but they weren’t in the /lib/modules/4.9.0… directory (I have an Nvidia 670).  It looks like they are stored as extra modules in the extramodules softlink in my default installation (now kernel 4.8).  

So I am gathering that many of the modules used in my default installation are not making it over to 4.9.  When running make localmodconfig, I am noticing error messages related to Nvidia and virtual box.  Some examples:

Nvidia config not found!!
Vbox_pci config not found!!

I also did a diff on the modules.symbols files between 4.9 and the default kernel and noticed many missing symbols in the 4.9 modules.symbols.  So I feel I’m missing a step somewhere.  Isn’t it supposed to make sure all loaded and unloaded modules are copied to 4.9?

Thanks!

-Daniel