Bug 518384

Summary: anaconda doesn't put initrd line in grub.conf
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: J. Randall Owens <jrowens.fedora>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Hans de Goede <hdegoede>
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: rawhideCC: vanmeeuwen+fedora
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-08-26 07:13:23 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Flags
tarball of anaconda logfiles and grub.conf none

Description J. Randall Owens 2009-08-20 07:46:39 UTC 
Description of problem:
Installing from http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/12-Alpha-RC2/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-12-Alpha-x86_64-netinst.iso, I couldn't boot after a couple of installations.  Checked contents of /boot and /boot/grub/grub.conf from a LiveCD, compared to standard Fedora installation, and realized that those had initrd lines that were missing from the Alpha RC2 grub.conf.  When I inserted a suitable initrd line, it boots up fine (although now, the mouse isn't working, I don't think the keyboard is doing anything, and I'm wondering how to get through setup like this!).

For the sake of others searching on the phrase, the exact message that popped up was "kernel panic - not syncing : VFS: unable to mount root FS on unknown-block(0,0)".

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
I'll let you know when I can boot the system.  Whatever's on the disk I mentioned above.

How reproducible:
Seems easy enough, so far.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install from netinstall image
2. reboot
3. watch
  
Actual results:
kernel panic - not syncing : VFS: unable to mount root FS on unknown-block(0,0)
frozen, w/ flashing caps lock LED (on a laptop)

Expected results:
At least get to the setup screen, THEN worry about the mouse & keyboard. ;)

Additional info:
My first tries were using LVM & LUKS; I thought those seemed likely culprits, so tried fresh install with plain partitions & no encryption before I found the grub.conf missing line.
Comment 1 Hans de Goede 2009-08-24 11:02:55 UTC 
Hmm,

The only way this can happen is if the mkinitrd command has failed to create an initrd. But it hasn't according to you, as adding the initrd line manually fixes things, right?

Can you please attach anaconda.log, storage.log and program.log from /var/log of the installed system ?

Also what does the suitable initrd line you added look like ?
Comment 2 J. Randall Owens 2009-08-26 01:06:28 UTC 
Created attachment 358654 [details]
tarball of anaconda logfiles and grub.conf

Here are those log files in a tarball.  I threw in anacond.*log and grub.conf, too, for good measure.  The initrd line I added (the grub.conf in the tarball is the modified one) was just:
        initrd /initrd-generic-2.6.31-0.162.rc6.git2.fc12.x86_64.img

I might have also changed the title to be more descriptive, but in the end, didn't make any other changes there.
Comment 3 Hans de Goede 2009-08-26 07:13:23 UTC 
Ah, so while you did use an F-12 *alpha* netinst.iso, you did not point the installer to an F-12 *alpha* repository, but instead to a rawhide repository
(the alpha has kernel-2.6.31-0.125.rc5.git2.fc12, where as you have 2.6.31-0.162.rc6.git2.fc12)

Yes rawhide has been switched over to use dracut, but anaconda does not take this into account while writing grub.conf. This is a known issue which I'm working on fixing, see bug 519185 .

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 519185 ***