If you boot with an initramfs (standard in bookworm), then failure to mount the real root will drop you to a busybox shell, without requiring a password. But that still does not match OP's description, so I agree the problem is after mounting root. (Or way earlier, in the case of "rainbow screen".)If the kernel can't find the root partition specified in cmdline.txt I'd expect it to panic not to drop to recovery mode.
How are your drive(s) partitioned? If sda2 is your root, then sda1 should normally be the FAT partition /boot/firmware (just /boot for older distros). Unless you are still using an SD card for that. Or maybe you were still using the SD card for root too, and sda1 was solely for samba?/dev/sda1 /media/pi ntfs defaults 0 0
If you have more than one USB drive (or might ever) it is essential to use PARTUUID= or UUID= or LABEL=, and not rely on a particular device enumerating as sda.
Statistics: Posted by jojopi — Fri Oct 11, 2024 1:52 am