A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5)
based upon a new upstream kernel release.

Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches
go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that
may address this problem.

This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO state.
Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is
still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed.

Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter
can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list
of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a
comment to the bug.

In the last few updates, some users upgrading from FC4->FC5
have reported that installing a kernel update has left their
systems unbootable. If you have been affected by this problem
please check you only have one version of device-mapper & lvm2
installed.  See bug 207474 for further details.

If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the
release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613.

If this bug has been fixed, but you are now experiencing a different
problem, please file a separate bug for the new problem.

Thank you.

I get the same error when trying to boot with root=/dev/md0 (Autodetect sw 
RAID5) using kernel-2.6.18-1.2239.fc5, but NOT with kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5

To clarify, changing nothing but the kernel selection from the boot loader 
menu, kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5 WILL boot and kernel-2.6.18-1.2239.fc5 WILL NOT 
boot with root=/dev/md0

Sorry for the sparse details.

I've had this problem for the past 6 months and I think I have found the source:
mkinitrd will sometimes forget to put /dev/md0 into the /dev of the initrd.

For me, this seems to be related to upgrade migrations moving from single disks
to raided  arrangements.  If mkinitrd is not run from a system with a mounted
running raided root partition, it refuses to put the /dev/md0 (or whichever)
into initrd's copy of /dev.  It also refuses to do this even when
MODULES="raid1" is explicitly specified.

NB: you can check your initrd contents quickly with a
gunzip -c initrd.img | cpio -it
to make sure the necessary files are there.

in /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd we can specify things like:
   MODULES="raid1"
it would be nice to be able to have 
   DEVS="md0 <other_devs>"
to ensure that those devices get mknod'ed in the initrd.
A command line option would be acceptable (preferable?) too.

With some of machines having this problem, I made initrd's on another machine
and copied them over in rescue mode.  The boot then worked, and initrd then
generated a sane and happy initrd for the machine.

Fedora Core 5 is no longer maintained. Is this bug still present in Fedora 7 or
Fedora 8?

Removing NeedsRetesting from whiteboard so we can repurpose it.

Fedora apologizes that these issues have not been resolved yet. We're
sorry it's taken so long for your bug to be properly triaged and acted
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If you're currently running a version of Fedora Core between 1 and 6,
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If this bug is still open against Fedora Core 1 through 6, thirty days
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Thanks for your help, and we apologize again that we haven't handled
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The process we are following is outlined here:
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I have the exact same problem with Fedora 8 when creating initrd's while running
an older 2.6.22 kernel. (It's hard to switch to a newer kernel when the initrd's
are not correctly created.)

I can't change the version field to 8 since I'm not the submitter.

(In reply to comment #0)
> 3. creating array in degraded mode:
> mdadm --create /dev/md0 -l 1 -n 2 missing /dev/sdb1
> mkfs -t ext3 /dev/md0  # the same results I have for ext2
> mount /dev/md0 /foo
> tar c / | tar xvC /foo
> adjusting /etc/fstab, /etc/grub.conf, running grub-install to be sure
> optional (has no effect for me): using mkinitrd --preload=raid1 ....
> 

mkinitrd looks at the current fstab. You probably needed to run "mkinitrd
--fstab=/foo/etc/fstab --preload=raid1 ..." after editing the new fstab.

Changing version to 8.  

Chuck-re: your last comment... is this not considered a bug? 

(In reply to comment #9)
> Changing version to 8.  
> 
> Chuck-re: your last comment... is this not considered a bug? 

mkinitrd can't tell that when the system gets rebooted the fstab will be coming
from a filesystem that's currently mounted somewhere else. I guess it could be
made to do that but it would be very complicated to figure out, requiring a look
at the "root=" parameter in grub.conf and then trying to figure out if that is
mounted somewhere else currently.

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Fedora 8 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-01-07. Fedora 8 is 
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If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
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