Bug 67695

Summary:	multiple kernels fail to boot
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Raw Hide	Reporter:	Alexander Farley <afarley>
Component:	grub	Assignee:	Jeremy Katz <katzj>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	1.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2002-07-02 13:13:27 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Alexander Farley 2002-06-29 20:16:16 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
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Description of problem:
Multiple kernels fail to boot (e.g. 2.4.18-5.58) on both a Pentium 4 and an
Athlon XP, with the read out Error 15: File not found.  The kernels that do work
all seem to have been installed before the problem started: rawhide kernels up
to 2.4.18-6.55 on the Pentium 4 and 2.4.18-5 on the Athlon XP.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install or build a new kernel
2.boot
3.boot fails
	

Actual Results:  The read out that is given:
root (hd0,0)
  Filesytem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-5.58 ro root=/dev/hda2
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x111923]
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-5.58.img

Error 15: File not found

Expected Results:  The kernels should work fine.

Additional info:

I originally thought that it was a hard ware problem on the Athlon, since it is
new and built by me.  However, the problem occurs on the Pentium 4 which has
been working fine for months.  I do not think that this is actually a problem
with GRUB, but I do not know where else to look.  I have read about the Grub
error and it was not very useful (and I do not think that the file that it
thinks is missing is actually missing).  Additionally I am baffled that the old
kernels work fine on both machines, but the new kernels do not.  A stock 2.4.17
kernel also fails.  Ordinarily I would not care that much, but I am trying to
run openMosix and this requires installing a new kernel.

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2002-06-29 20:52:48 UTC

Based on the error, I'm guessing that you have /boot as a separate partition --
you need to specify the initrd as /initrd-foo instead of /boot/initrd-foo
because grub's root is set such that it's already looking in the /boot
partition.  Does this solve the problem?

Comment 2 Alexander Farley 2002-07-01 12:19:50 UTC

Beautiful. Such a simple solution. Everything works perfectly now.  However,
souldn't the installer script for the kernel RPM packages be changed to install
the initrd images without the "/boot" part.  I thought that the default
installation creates a boot partition separate from the root partition?

Comment 3 Jeremy Katz 2002-07-02 05:03:49 UTC

They should be properly detecting whether or not you have a separate /boot or
not -- what were the contents of your /boot/grub/grub.conf file and what version
of the mkinitrd package do you have installed?

Comment 4 Alexander Farley 2002-07-02 13:13:21 UTC

I am using mkinitrd 3.4.12-1, which looks like the newest version of the package.

My /boot/grub/grub.conf file:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=2
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-5.58)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-5.58 ro root=/dev/hda2
	initrd (/boot)/initrd-2.4.18-5.58.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-5)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-5 ro root=/dev/hda2
	initrd /initrd-2.4.18-5.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda2
	initrd /initrd-2.4.18-3.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.17-openmosix2)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.17-openmosix2 ro root=/dev/hda2
	initrd (/boot)/initrd-2.4.17-openmosix2.img

The boots in parentheses were inserted by the script/mkinitrd and prevented
those kernels from booting.  When the "/boot" was eliminated the kernels were
able to boot up perfectly.

Comment 5 Jeremy Katz 2002-07-18 04:11:12 UTC

mkinitrd was broken in rawhide for this at one point but has since been fixed.