Description of problem: Booting a custom kernel up to 2.6.16.9 works flawlessly, since 2.6.17-pre2 (first tested kernel), booting failed in initrd. Last seen command on screen: "Creating block device nodes." I assume "mkblkdevs" is not compatible with the /proc and /sys changes in 2.6.17. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): mkinitrd-5.0.32 mkinitrd-5.0.34 How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install pristine 2.6.17-pre2 kernel (with initrd aktived) 2. boot Actual results: Hangs in mkblkdevs Expected results: boot Additional info:
I can't reproduce this. Is it still a problem for you?
Yes, it is a problem of the device-mapper devices for hda. My solution was to drop the device-mapper interfaces and using hda directly, since I'm not using any RAID option. I assume the correct devicenames are not generated automatically. Dirk
See bugzilla bugs 196556, 196626, and 204260. mkinitrd-5.0.32 needs to be rebuilt against parted-1.7.1 and an errata issued along with the (hopefully) upcoming parted errata. This bug kept me on a 2.6.16 kernel with known security problems for a VERY long time.
mkinitrd-5.0.32-2 has been pushed for fc5, which should resolve this issue. If these problems are still present in this version, then please make note of it in this bug report.
I had a similar problem, possibly even exactly the same, although the last command visible on the screen when my system hung while booting was "Making device-mapper control node." My suspicion is that the difference is related to hardware configuration (I am booting to an LVM on a RAID array) but I can't say for sure. The fix in my case was to install a newer version of mkinitrd and then use that to rebuild the kernel image in the boot directory. I am using mkinitrd-5.1.8-1, but the earliest one I've heard of working is 5.1.2-1 (see comment 12 in Bug 196626). As of right now I see that the latest version of mkinitrd available in the development repository is 5.1.9-1. I assume this version will also work, but I can't say for sure since I haven't tested it. Now that 5.0.32-2 has been pushed I will try testing that to see if it works properly for me.
*** Bug 196626 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 196556 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Maybe this is a foolish question, but where can I find mkinitrd-5.0.32-2? I just re-installed from scratch, and yum does not report any updates avaiable for mkinitrd unless I enable to development repo. When checking the development repo, I see the same version available that I saw previously, which was 5.1.9-1. Right now I am still running 5.0.32-1, which I know does not work with the 2.6.17 kernels.
Nevermind, I was able to find it by enabling the updates-testing repo. My testing confirmed that this new build of mkinitrd should successfully resolve the issues many users were experiencing with 2.6.17 kernels.
Not working for me! I updated from testing to mkinitrd-5.0.32-2 run mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp.img 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp -> still same problem. Did I missed something? Note: 1/ I also updated parted recently 2/ I did not installed mkinitrd 5.1.9 thus didn't upgraded glibc.
Re: Comment 10 Have you tried using yum to remove and then reinstall the kernel package now that you have mkinitrd-5.0.32-2 installed? I know some other people have reported that that worked for them. When I installed 5.0.32-2 from updates-testing, I did not need to update glibc either. My testing was done on a freshly installed system and everything went smoothly for me. The only things I had updated before updating mkinitrd and the kernel were firefox and gaim, so I doubt that would have made any difference.
*** Bug 205009 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I confirm: I tried removing kernel and reinstalled with yum. It still fail to boot! I run on kernel-smp-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5. kernel-smp-2.6.17-1.2174_FC5 does NOT work for me. System seems to not find the root partition. I was followin this bug first: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=196556
Marc, based on your comment in Bug 196556, I suspect you are experiencing a different issue: "kernel-smp-2.6.17-1.2174_FC5 does not boot while kernel-smp-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 was OK!!" To the best of my knowledge, this bug afflicted ALL kernel 2.6.17 releases, so if 2.6.17-1.2157 works for you, but 2.6.17-1.2174 does not, I suspect the bug you are experiencing is different from this one. You may want to consider starting a new bug thread.
according to the comments the initially reported issue seems to be fixed. In case there are still issues with custom kernel on Fedora 7 or 8, please open a new bug report. Older releases of Fedora are no longer supported.