fsck fails during boot with 2.6.9-34.0.1.EL kernel because root filesystem is already rw mounted

[Floriola]

Hi,

I have a RHES4 server running kernel version 2.6.9-34.EL. During this night, I have updated to
latest kernel-2.6.9-34.0.1.EL. The problem is that with the new kernel, my linux is not booting
anymore. During the boot, I have the following error:

Checking root filesystem
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.


[FAILED]

*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
*** Warning -- SELinux is active
*** Disabling security enforcement for system recovery.
*** Run 'setenforce 1' to reenable.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):

Luckily, I still have the old kernel installed, so I booted with the old one, without any
problems.

I dig a bit more, and I found the following:

In the old 2.6.9-34.EL kernel that I am able to boot with, the init script in the initrd contains
the following mount command:

mount -o defaults --ro -t ext2 /dev/root /sysroot 

while with the new kernel 2.6.9-34.0.1.EL that I have just installed, the init file in the initrd
contanin the following command:

mount -o rw --ro -t ext2 /dev/root /sysroot 

So this is why with the new kernel, my root filesystem si already mounted read-write during the
boot process, before the fsck.

However, this looks quite weird. First, I cannot find anywhere what this --ro means (there are no
info about this option in the man page). Most probably, it means that the filesystem should be
mount read-only, but then why in the new kernel the mount command contains also "-o rw" option?

And why in the previous kernel, the root filesystem was mounted with the "-o defaults" option, and
the new one is mounted with the "-o rw" option?

Any ideeas? 

Thank you in advance,

Floriola

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