Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 316911
kernel panic vmlinux-2.6.22.9-91.fc7, can not upgrade from 2.6.22.5-73 on restored filesystem
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:12:17 EST
Description of problem: Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): When attempting to boot from vmlinux-2.6.22.9-91.fc7, the kernel fails to find root and panics. The machine boots normally from vmlinux-2.6.22.5-76.fc7. The only thing that makes this a little unique is that I restored this system from backup. The backed up initrd did not work, so I created a new one by installing a small Fedora install, and then using the same initrd to point to the regular install. My root is on a LVM logical volume on RAID device /dev/md2. I might have thought this was related to the problem, but it appears to find the logical volume group, and the same kernel works on my DELL machine with virtually the same configuration. mount could not find filesystem '/dev/root' Setting up other filesystems Setting up new root fs2 setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory Switching to new root and running init umounting old /dev umounting old /proc umounting old /sys switchroot: mount failed. No such file or directory Booting has failed. Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempt to kill init! How reproducible: Everytime I boot. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Try rebooting my machine after upgrading from 2.6.22.5-76 to 2.6.22.9-91 2. 3. Actual results: kernel panic Expected results: boots normally Additional info: Contents of grub.conf: default=0 timeout=30 splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora (2.6.22.9-91.fc7) root (hd0,1) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22.9-91.fc7 ro root=/dev/h6410/Fedora7 initrd /initrd-2.6.22.9-91.fc7.img title Fedora (2.6.22.5-76.fc7) root (hd0,1) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-76.fc7 ro root=/dev/h6410/Fedora7 initrd /initrd-2.6.22.5-76.fc7.img title Windows XP Pro rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1 title Small Fedora (2.6.22.5-76.fc7) root (hd0,1) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-76.fc7 ro root=/dev/h6410/Fedora7small initrd /initrd-2.6.22.5-76.fc7.img title Rescue root (hd0,1) kernel /vmlinuz initrd /initrd.img
Note: In the original system my root filesystem was /dev/sys/Fedora7. When I restored it from backup, I placed it on raid device /dev/md2 as /dev/h6410/Fedora7.
Can you compare the working and non-working initrds? The below link has some directions: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelBugTriage#head-22000aaecbb847220ed786f4b17129fd8fc79668
I compared, and it turns out the problem is /etc/mdadm.conf was missing from the initrd-2.6.22.9-91.fc7.img file. I copied mdadm.conf from the old initrd to /etc in my root filesystem, and then rebuild the now initrd. That solved the probem. So it appears the problem is that the logic for finding the root partition in the initrd is not correct. Even though /dev/md2 was activated without having mdm.conf, and the logical volume was found, it could not find the root partition without access to an mdm.conf file. Bill
Closing as notabug, it's not really posible to reconstruct exactly what happened.
I believe that should be a "WORKSFORME". As it definitely is a bug, but it works for you, so you can not reproduce it to try and fix the problem.