Continuing the saga: F9alpha AMD-64 HP DC7700 SFF switch_root: no filesystems

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 01:40:42AM -0400, Will Woods wrote:
> 
> 
> So, nearly all of the "cannot find /dev/root" problems we've seen have  
> been mkinitrd-related. So davej is correct: it is very likely to be a  
> mkinitrd bug.

It is not entirely clear from what John writes what happens
with what kernel and when.  If you see in dmesg, like a fragment
which he included recently (not clear from which kernel):

ata1.00: ATA-7: ST3320620AS, 3.AAK, max UDMA/133
ata1.00: 625142448 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata1.01: ATA-8: WDC WD5000AAKS-00YGA0, 12.01C02, max UDMA/133
ata1.01: 976773168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)

and booting fails then most likely initrd is at fault.

If, OTOH, like in this fragment of dmesg for
2.6.25-0.90.rc3.git5.fc9 which John added to bugzilla, you have

ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 221 SControl 300)

then it is hard to even consider initrd as there is no chance
for it to be ever loaded since disks are "invisible".

> It *might* actually be something in the sata driver..  

That second piece points to that although it is possible that
in this case both show up.

Of course when you see a screen picture with the last few lines
which say that / is not there, and all other information scrolled
out a long time ago, then the most natural reaction is
"uh-hu, that initrd is messed up" just because a kernel managed
to get that far so in a sense it already "booted".

   Michal