[Libguestfs] appliance VM won't start, can't find /init, but /init is in the image.

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 05:16:13PM -0700, David Konerding wrote:
> Hi,
> Still trying to get libguestfs appliance test to work on Ubuntu Lucid.  I
> figured out my umask was causing problems and fixed that.  now I'm on to a
> new problem.  libguestfs-test-tool reports the following:
> 
> febootstrap: mounting new root on /root
> febootstrap: chroot
> /proc/uptime: No such file or directory
> execl: /init: No such file or directory
> febootstrap: debug: listing directory /
>     2 d .                040755 4096 88619:5000
>     2 d ..               040755 4096 88619:5000
>    11 d lost+found       040700 16384 0:0
>    12 d bin              040755 4096 23083:5000
>    13 d boot             040755 4096 23083:5000
>    14 d etc              040755 4096 23083:5000
>   109 d lib              040755 4096 23083:5000
>   156 d sbin             040755 4096 23083:5000
>   157 d usr              040755 4096 23083:5000
>   534 d var              040755 4096 23083:5000
>  3701 - init             100750 3264 23083:5000
> 
> Note, init is indeed a file (a shell script).  I checked the root and initrd
> images, and they both have init (the initrd has an init binary, the root has
> a shell script that starts udev etc).

The problem is that the kernel gives the same error "execl: /init: No
such file or directory" for a whole variety of reasons.  These
include:

 - /init missing (obviously not the case here)

 - /bin/sh missing

 - any library that /bin/sh needs is missing

 - ld-linux missing

So you need to make sure /bin/sh is there.  If it's a symlink (eg. to
dash) then the destination file is there.  Then do 'ldd /bin/sh' and
make sure all of the required libraries and ld-linux are there.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into Xen guests.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v