UPDATE:
I have just received an update from Linode to say that this issue has now been fixed for new deployments of Debian 6.

For everyone with the issue on existing deployments, you need to run the following command:

ln -s /dev/xvda /dev/root

(Substitue xvda with the device you are using as root, if needed)
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Hi,

I had previuosly been running Ubuntu 10.04 with Virtualmin and everything worked fine. Virtualmin recently announced support for Debian 6, so I backed up all my data and sought to rebuild my linode with Debian 6.

Now there seems to be a problem, I'm not sure if it is a Linode one or a Virtualmin one, or a combination of both. I have found other Linode users have the same problem. Please see this thread on Virtualmin for the problem, including my comments:

http://www.virtualmin.com/node/17281

Thanks.

EDIT:

I opened a support ticket with Linode and got this response:

what does cat /proc/mounts show ?

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I have the same problem exactly- my /proc/mounts shows:

linpear:~# cat /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext3 rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,data=writeback,usrquota,grpquota 0 0
tmpfs /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620 0 0

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Chris Bryant

Well you have /dev/root in /proc/mounts which is good does

ls /dev | grep root

come up empty for you too?

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From what I've seen this only seems to affect people running Debian 6 at Linode. Could it be that there is a bug in their distro?

Or maybe just some config we need to set up that on the Linode distro isnt already done by default?

I believe a workaround is to create a dev/root symlink, but it doesnt seem like a proper fix.

Yes.

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Chris Bryant

Alright I just installed debian 6 from the debian website on vmware and /dev/root is symlinked to /dev/sda so symlinking does seem like the correct fix (just to whatever your root device is in your case, probably /dev/xvda). One of you having problems could poke linode support with a pointy stick and ask them if they can add the symlink to their distro.

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Ah so symlink is the correct fix. Ill update my ticket.

Thanks for the investigatory help!

Dumb question, but that would be :
ln -s /dev/root /dev/xvda wouldn't it? I try that and get a file exists error.

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Chris Bryant

wrong way round it's

ln -s /dev/xvda /dev/root

it's ln [source] [dest]

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Thanks- I always have trouble with that, from the first time I tried to get the java plugin working on my local machine .

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Chris Bryant

I have had a reply back from Linode, their distro team is currently looking into it.

Well- no joy for me yet. It does get farther, but now gives this error:
Error: setquota: Cannot open quotafile //aquota.user: Permission denied
setquota: Not all specified mountpoints are using quota.

For me it's not a huge deal, just a pain.

I really don't understand why it is a Linode issue (though it does appear to be), because it was working fine before I upgraded to Squeeze, so I'm not using a Linode Debian 6 image, but a Debian 5 image upgraded.

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Chris Bryant

I'm at work at the moment so cant test the symlink out, when I get back I'll see if just adding the symlink to a clean Deb 6 distro, fixes it.

Just a quick thought, if you are using Deb 5 upgraded to 6, then that means it has nothing to do with the Deb 6 distro that Linode have.....

I'm getting more confused, lol.