boot up fails with mount root problem...

[Ed Greshko]

Ben Russo wrote:
> I have a RHEL-2.1ES OS running just fine on a standard PC (with an IDE
> disk).
> 
> I wanted to migrate that system to a new box with a SCSI disk.
> 
> I used a 3rd box running RHEL-3 to mount the new SCSI disk,
> used fdisk to create all the partitions, and mkfs.ext3 to create the
> filesystems, e2label to label them, and then I mounted them all up
> and used rsync -avzH <oldserver>:/* .  -exclude "proc/*"
> 
> Everything seemed to work fine.
> 
> Then I chroot'd into the new filesystem
> 
> I then edited the /etc/modules.conf and added a line for the scsi
> hostadaptor, and deleted the /etc/mtab, and edited the /etc/fstab
> and modified it appropriately.
> 
> I created new initrd files, and edited grub.conf
> 
> I put the SCSI disk in the new box, booted from RHEL-3 CD in rescue
> mode, chrooted into /mnt/sysimage edited the /boot/grub/devices.map
> and then ran grub-install.
> 
> Rebooted off the SCSI disk.  Worked up until I get:
> 
> ...
> Partition check:
>  sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 sda9 >
> Loading jbd module
> Journalled Block Device driver loaded
> Loading ext3 module
> Mounting /proc filesystem
> Creating root device
> Mountin root filesystem
> mount: error 19 mounting ext3
> pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
> Freeing unused kernel memory: 228k freed
> Kernel panic: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel
> 
> I checked that /dev/sd* devices are all there, and they have the right
> perm's and ownership.  I also can boot from rescue CD and mount up all
> the filesystems as ext3 (they are clean).  I triple checked my grub.conf
> file and devices.map and initrd stuff.  All the modules seem to have
> loaded fine, and it can see the disk (as evidenced by the partition
> check). I also have another box with identical hardware and I confirmed
> that it has the same devices.map and grub.conf config...
> 
> 
> What gives?  What does this error "error 19 mounting ext3" mean then?

Well....even though you've said you've check the initrd stuff it seems
the errors are point to something missing.

What I would do is take the initrd file that you have, un-gzip it and
mount it with -o loop and then take a look in lib and make sure all of
what you need is there.

In the past I ran into something similar and in my case the 3w-xxxx.o
was missing even though I could have sworn it was added.  :-)

-- 
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools."

--Ford Prefect in "Mostly Harmless".