Messages in this thread | | | From | "Jeremy Booker" <> | Subject | initrd / pivot_root + boot problems | Date | Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:54:02 -0500 |
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Hi,
While looking for support on the egigma-list@redhat.com list, someone recommended that I ask here.
Here's the deal...
After forgetting my root password and trying to boot into single user mode under Red Hat 7.2 Pro (boxed retail set) I have run into a kernel panic. In grub I edited the boot commands to include "kernel /boot/.... single". Immediately after doing this the system failed to boot with the error message "kernel panic: no init found. Try passing init= to kernel". (Previously the machine had run just fine and had been up for over 150 days). After the first failure I tried adding any combination of "single", "-single", "s", and "-s" I could think of, and changed their position in the command (first/last parameter, appended "single" to other commands including initrd line). Nothing could get me into single user mode, I never got past the kernel panic. I also tried passing init= as a kernel argument with the path listed on the "initrd" command. I eventually booted to rescue mode from a RH 7.2 install disk and got my password changed. However, I am still unable to boot from the hard drives. (In a software RAID 1 config)
My grub.conf file contains the following: root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/sda1 initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img
( I set the file back to exactly how it looked when I started, any changes I made were always lost after having to reboot)
Also of interest is an error that occurred just before the kernel panic. It read "pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initd) failed:2". Does anyone know what the "2" error code indicates? I cannot find this anywhere in any documentation of pivot_root. It seems to be a rather obscure function in the first place. Maybe if someone could shed some light on this?
The machine in question is a single CPU (Intel PIII 800mhz) with 2 SCSI drives in RAID 1 (mirroring). I'm guessing from the 'kernel' line that my kernel version is "vmlinuz-2.4.7-10". It is the one that came with RH 7.2 Pro retail box. I haven't upgraded or modified anything.
I'm not entirely sure of my file system layout. (I'm a relative newbie, unsure about devices and file systems still) I'm using RAID 1 on two SCSI drives. It was setup by the installer during the install process and I assume it uses all the defaults. I don't know the layout of fstab. The machine is remote (co-located in a data center), and I have no way of copying/pasting or saving that information from the server.
I also took a look in /var/log/boot and all the recent files were blank. Nothing ever got written to them.
From research I have done online, I have found other posts mentioning this exact problem. However, none of them have any solutions. It was suggested that this may be due to file system corruption. I doubt this is the case as I can mount my software RAID 1 drives from rescue mode and read/write all the files just fine. Everything seems to be intact. I have not run fsck but I will do that ASAP.
I have gotten my hands on the latest RH 8.0 ISOs. Could upgrading from 7.2 to 8.0 cure my woes? Would this just preserve the hardware/device misconfiguration?
My problem looks to described in more detail in this post: https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/valhalla-list/2003-January/thread.html# 23350 and here: http://lists.ethernal.org/cantlug-0208/msg00472.html and here: http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/mail-archives/lfs-support/2003/02/0018.h tml and here: http://www.gollatz.net/troubleshooting
Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Regards, Jeremy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jeremy Booker - Owner / Webmaster JTech Web Systems www.JTechWebSystems.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Mathew 5:34
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