Comment 1 for bug 114321

well, I looked into the issue again:

From 2.6.17 to 2.6.20 the naming schema for ide-devices changed. And I didn't adjusted the device names in grub/menu.lst. Specially 'root=/dev/hdFOO' was the problem. Because of this the initrd:/scripts/local scipt loops for 180 (!) seconds around '/lib/udev/vol_id ${ROOT}'. This script only writes an info message about a following 180s timeout operation to the splash-screen via '/sbin/usplash_write' - and I have the splash screen disabled ... - thus nothing is printed to the screen.

After replacing the wrong ide-device names in grub-config, the machine boots fine with 2.6.20.

To debug these kind of problems, adding 'debug=y' to the kernel command line helps a lot, btw (initramfs scripts issue a lot of extra output to the console).

To sum it up:
- perhaps 180s timeout for waiting if the root devices shows up is perhaps too long. Which harddisk controllers need 180s to initialize their attached harddisks?
- /sbin/usplash_write should write to the console, if the splash screen is disabled (i.e. 'splash' is not included in the kernel command line)

Regards
Georg Sauthoff