F9 doesn't find swap or /root system on new motherboard

[Roger Heflin]

M. Fioretti wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> My motherboard, on which I was running F9 x86_64 off one SATA drive, died.
> I bought a new motherboard with a new cpu of the same type (AMD) and
> connected the hard disk with F9 to it. Now Grub does start with these
> options:
> 
> kernel/vmlinuz/-2.6.27-etc ro root=/dev/sda3 rhgb mem=2048M enforcing 0
> 
> but the process stops at a certain point, saying:
> 
> Trying to resume from /dev/sda2
> Unable to access resume device (/dev/sda2)
> Creating root device
> Mounting root filesystem
> Mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: no such file or
> directory
> 
> 
> IIRC I had these partitions:
> 
> /boot /dev/sda1
> swap /dev/sda2
> /    /dev/sda3
> /home /sda5
> 
> 
> So (also from some research I made before posting) this means that on the
> new board the kernel cannot find the swap anymore, but why? I mean, if it
> boots, as it does, it means that it has found the device corresponding to
> the hard drive, isn't it?

It means that *grub* has found the device using *bios* calls.   Linux 
does not use *bios* calls.  And Linux is not find *any* partitions at 
all, even the boot one.   Grub through bios calls loads vmlinuz and 
initrd into memory and then starts it up, which will find through 
Linux drivers everything needed to actually boot.

The base problem is the new MB likely has a *different* sata device 
controlling the drives, and the driver for that is not in the initrd 
used to boot Linux, so Linux cannot find any disk devices.

The typical fix is to boot a rescue, figure out from the rescue what 
driver is needed and update modprobe.conf and rebuilt the initial ram 
disk with that driver, and try again.

You won't be able to fix it through grub, you may be able to change MB 
settings and change drivers needed for the disk (often sata ports can 
do either IDE or ahci--each of which uses a different driver--that 
*maybe* the old mb used).