Booting with raided root, debian system

Booting with raided root, debian system

[Paul Downs]

Hi,
  I have been trying for a good few days now to try and boot a fully raided
debian system with Lilo and a custom compiled kernel.  The file system does
not have a separate /boot partion.  Lilo's configuration file has boot= and
root= specified as /dev/md0.

  The custom compiled kernel has md and raid1 modules statically built,
along with ext3, cramfs and associated modules.  There is also an initrd.

  I have experienced various issues but now I have a system where , if I
boot off /dev/hdb1 (hda and hdc are in the raid) I can succesfully install
lilo with:

mount -text3 /dev/md0 /mnt
lilo -r /mnt

  No errors appear and the system appears to boot normally until it
attempts to mount the root.  At which point it errors and stops with an
"attempt to kill init" message.

  Can anyone give me any pointers?  I have tried not to include too much
detail here so if you want pastes of any configuration files etc. just
shout.

  Using grub I can get a system to boot fine however when issuing this style
of command sequence:

root(hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20 root=/dev/md0
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.4.20
boot

  I get an identical error message to lilo.  Have I missed something in
initrd, I have done nothing fancy with it.

Your's banging head against wall and giving up on raided root.

Paul

Re: Booting with raided root, debian system

[Mads Peter Bach]

Paul Downs wrote:

>   No errors appear and the system appears to boot normally until it
> attempts to mount the root.  At which point it errors and stops with an
> "attempt to kill init" message.
> 
>   Can anyone give me any pointers?  I have tried not to include too much
> detail here so if you want pastes of any configuration files etc. just
> shout.

A copy of the errormessages before "attempt to kill init" would be quite 
helpful :-)

Also, a copy of lilo's output when you install it might help.

-- 
Mads Peter Bach
Systemadministrator,  Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Aalborg Universitet
Kroghstræde 3 - 5.111, DK-9220 Aalborg Øst
# whois MPB1-DK@whois.dk-hostmaster.dk

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Re: Booting with raided root, debian system

[Paul Downs]

* Mads Peter Bach (mpb@hum.auc.dk) wrote :

Hi,

> A copy of the errormessages before "attempt to kill init" would be quite 
> helpful :-)

  I had to do another run on a different server so the results were slightly
different from my memory, the results where the same:

Ext3-fs: unable to read superblock
mount: wrong fs type /dev2/root xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cramfs: wrong magic
mount: wrong fs type /dev2/root xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
warning: can't open mtab
pivot_root: no such file or directory
/sbin/init: 107: cannot open /dev/console no such file
kernel panic: attempt to kill init!

> Also, a copy of lilo's output when you install it might help.

dev3:~$ mount -text3 /dev/md0 /mnt
dev3:~$ lilo -r /mnt

  With boot and root set to /dev/md0.  Output line was as you expect (e.g.
installing to /dev/md0 etc. etc.  said it installed ok) however this was the
penultimate line:

Unexpected dirty buffer encountered at do_get_write_access:613 (09:00
blocknr 0)


Any help appreciated.

Paul

Re: Booting with raided root, debian system

[Paul Downs]

* Paul Downs (paul@positive-internet.com) wrote :

>   I had to do another run on a different server so the results were slightly
> different from my memory, the results where the same:

  Oops meant to say:

  Although the results from each action differ slightly from my memory the
end result (e.g. kernel panic etc.) were the same.

Paul