I am trying to install a Linux kernel (3.8.1) from source in a Fedora distribution. The kernel is a vanilla one. I follow the kernel's build instructions closely that is:
make menuconfig make sudo make modules_install install sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Everything in /boot seems fine. I can see System.map, initramfs, and vmlinuz for the newly compiled kernel. The vmlinuz link points to vmlinuz-3.8.1. There are multiple other kernels installed including an Ubuntu one. grub2 recognises all of them and I can boot to each one of them.
When I reboot I see all kernels as menu entries and choose 3.8.1.
Then I see this message:
early console in decompress_kernel decompressing Linux... parsing ELF ... done Booting the kernel. [1.687084] systemd [1]:failed to mount /dev:no such device [1.687524] systemd [1]:failed to mount /dev:no such device Solution:
All three posted responses provide the solution. CONFIG_DEVTMPFS was in fact causing the issue. I copied a working kernel's /boot/config-… into the root of the source tree as .config and executed the standard commands for building the kernel also shown above.
PS: Since I can only give one tick, it's fair to give it to the most concise answer providing the shortest time-to-solution. Thank you all.
