FC3: kernel panic on first boot

[John Swartzentruber]

On 12/2/2004 8:37 AM Robin Bowes wrote:

> Hi,
>
> First some system details:
>
> Epox EP-D3VA motherboard
> dual 1Ghz PIII processors
> 1.5GB RAM
> 2 x Promise SATA150 TX4 controllers
> 6 x Maxtor Maxline II 250GB SATA HDDs (3 per controller)
>
> The drives are all partitioned identically with two partitions: 1.5GB 
> + 248.5GB. The partitions are configured in raid arrays as follows:
>
> /dev/md0: /dev/sd[ad]1        / (root filesystem)
> /dev/md1: /dev/sd[be]1        swap
> /dev/md2: /dev/sd[cf]1        swap
> /dev/md5: /dev/sd[abcdef]2    lvm2 volume
>
> /home, /usr, and /var are mounted as lvm2 logical volumnes on the 
> /dev/md5 array.
>
> I was running FC2. I then decided to upgrade to FC3.
>
> I booted from the DVD (the media check completed OK) and went through 
> the system upgrade.
>
> All seemed to go well and I rebooted.
>
> However, the boot process halted with the following message:
>
> Loading ext3.ko module
> md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
> md: autorun ...
> md: ... autorun DONE.
> md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
> md: autorun ...
> md: ... autorun DONE.
> md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
> md: autorun ...
> md: ... autorun DONE.
> Creating root device
> Mounting root filesystem
> EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock
> mount: error 22 mounting ext3
> mount: error 2 mounting none
> Switching to new root
> switchroot: mount failed: 22
> umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
> Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
>
> This is with the default 2.6.9-1.667smp kernel.
>
> I booted into rescue mode and chrooted into the upgraded system - all
> seems fine, i.e. all the filesystems are OK.
>
> I then upgraded all the packages using "yum upgrade" within the chroot
> environment. This installed kernel-2.6.9-1.681_FC3smp.
>
> I rebooted and got the same error as above. I also tried "downgrading" 
> to a 2.6.8 kernel but got the same error.
>
> Am I hitting the known bug [1] with SATA drives in the 2.6.9 kernel ? 
> Or is this some other problem?
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=140367
>
> Can anyone shed any light on this problem?
>
Look through the archives. I fixed it by building a new initrd file that 
included the driver for my SATA controller. I also noticed that my 
modprobe.conf file was missing things after upgrading, which might have 
been the original problem.