I happened to pass swap partition as root partition in cmdline, then kernel panic and tell me about "Cannot open root device". It is not correct, in fact it is a mount failer instead of ''no device''. Eventually I found btrfs mounting failed with -EIO, it should be -EINVAL. Here fix the return value as -EINVAL Signed-off-by: Dave Young <hidave.darkstar@gmail.com> --- fs/btrfs/disk-io.c | 4 +++- fs/btrfs/volumes.c | 8 +++++--- 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) --- linux-2.6.orig/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c 2010-12-29 21:53:17.473333338 +0800 +++ linux-2.6/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c 2010-12-29 21:57:37.916666672 +0800 @@ -1713,8 +1713,10 @@ struct btrfs_root *open_ctree(struct sup fs_info, BTRFS_ROOT_TREE_OBJECTID); bh = btrfs_read_dev_super(fs_devices->latest_bdev); - if (!bh) + if (!bh) { + err = -EINVAL; goto fail_iput; + } memcpy(&fs_info->super_copy, bh->b_data, sizeof(fs_info->super_copy)); memcpy(&fs_info->super_for_commit, &fs_info->super_copy, --- linux-2.6.orig/fs/btrfs/volumes.c 2010-12-29 21:53:17.503333338 +0800 +++ linux-2.6/fs/btrfs/volumes.c 2010-12-29 21:57:37.920000005 +0800 @@ -598,8 +598,10 @@ static int __btrfs_open_devices(struct b set_blocksize(bdev, 4096); bh = btrfs_read_dev_super(bdev); - if (!bh) + if (!bh) { + ret = -EINVAL; goto error_close; + } disk_super = (struct btrfs_super_block *)bh->b_data; devid = btrfs_stack_device_id(&disk_super->dev_item); @@ -700,7 +702,7 @@ int btrfs_scan_one_device(const char *pa goto error_close; bh = btrfs_read_dev_super(bdev); if (!bh) { - ret = -EIO; + ret = -EINVAL; goto error_close; } disk_super = (struct btrfs_super_block *)bh->b_data; @@ -1193,7 +1195,7 @@ int btrfs_rm_device(struct btrfs_root *r set_blocksize(bdev, 4096); bh = btrfs_read_dev_super(bdev); if (!bh) { - ret = -EIO; + ret = -EINVAL; goto error_close; } disk_super = (struct btrfs_super_block *)bh->b_data;