[Soekris] Serial console

[Andrea Conti]

> I get an error "Warning: unable to open initial console"

You are missing /dev/console.

On a system using udev, /dev is typically on a tmpfs and all device
nodes are created as soon as udev is started during the boot process.
The console and null devices, however, are needed even before /dev is
mounted and udev is started, so they must be already there *on the root
filesystem*.

Assuming that you can get to a command prompt using another kernel, do
something like

#mkdir /tmp/root
#mount -o bind / /tmp/root
#ls -l /tmp/root/dev

If the directory is empty create the two devices with mknod (or just
copy them from the udev-managed /dev directory):

#cp -a /dev/console /dev/null /tmp/root/dev

Reboot and you should be done.

Andrea