f11 to f12 with preugrade doesn't find root device

[Gianluca Cecchi]

On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:56:18 +0800 He Rui wrote:
> Hi Gianluca, I experienced the same as you when I preupgraded to rawhide
> with anaconda 13.8. But I just retested it, the preupgrade upgraded the old
> system to f12 with anaconda 12.46. Then I didn't encounter this again.
> Can you confirm your anaconda version when reboot after preupgrade?

How to check?
Now I'm on F12, finally upgraded and running....
My steps were, resuming them, starting yesterday:
- yum update on my F11
- yum install preupgrade
- run preupgrade GUI, select F12 and complete this phase and reboot
- upgrade starts but stops because my redhat-release was "funcky". I
change it and reboot again in upgrade mode
- upgrade starts and proceeds until it finds an incomplete rpm and
offers only to abort
         ---> here I would like pre-verification during the preupgrade phase,
               or to be offered a chance to retry, so that I can put
the right package
- In my case the problem was with libgcj-4.4.2-7.fc12.x86_64.rpm.
it was downloaded as 17.5 MB instead of the correct 18.5Mb.....
While in upgrade with the error I changed to console 2, I downloaded
the package from another machine, put it to an usb key and connect it
to my server, then I chroot and manually ran rpm -Uvh of it and
finally reboot again in upgrade mode
- server boots in upgrade again and flawlessly continues from where it
stopped (as I see fewer packages showed to be upgraded). To have
upgrade run I need to change again redhat-release to F11 version text
(it was already updated and contained F12... so that upgrade complains
of this if I don't reverse it...
    ----> probably better a sort of lock file instead of testing
contents of a file....
- upgrade completes (about 2.5 hours spended in finishing phase... it
seems it scans all the disk files... perhaps verification) and reboots
- my newly upgrade f12 stops with the message
dracut: /var/log/lvm2.log: fopen failed: No such file or directory
and then inability to scan LVM devices and so in particular my root device.....
- boot again F12 with option "rdinitdebug rdshell"
Here I go with fantasy, also based in previous experience .-)
I'm put into a shell where I can manually create the directory
/var/log and at this point from this rescue shell I can scan and
activate my LVM volumes. So now I can chroot in my F12 root LV and
mount /boot under it and

 1) gunzip-cpio initramfs into a temporary directory,
  2) create /var/log under this initrd tree and repack into a new
initrd filethat I put inside /boot
  3) change grub to point to this new initrd
  4) reboot

- the system finally correctly reboots in F12 !!!!

If you tell me where to search for anaconda version you referred (in
/root/upgrade.log or other files eventually...)
I will report

Gianluca