Description of problem: With the new kernel-2.6.23.14-115.fc8 installed, my Pentium-M 1ghz laptop fails to boot. This is not a problem with kernel-2.6.23.14-107.fc8 and thus is a regression. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.23.14-115.fc8 How reproducible: 100% - I have un-installed and grabbed a fresh download of the -115 RPM and it still happens. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install latest (-115) kernel 2. Boot 3. (there is not step 3 :-)) Actual results: The boot process starts failing right after it validates that there is no resume image within swap and starts creating root device. It fails doing a mount of /dev/root on /sysroot as auto with a "No such device" message. From this point on many other failures occur such as failing to mount /proc or /sys or changing rights on /dev due to the lack of directories due to the lack of mounting of /dev/root. This prevents the boot to complete switchroot which then ultimately causes the boot to stop with a "Booting has failed" message. Expected results: Normal boot up process - mount of /dev/root, setup of other filesystems, pivot root to the actual root filesystem. All of which fails. Additional info: This is on a laptop partitioned without LVM. Physical partitions include /boot(sda1) swap(sda2) /(sda3) (This is a laptop and thus runs a very simplistic disk setup) The partitions are mounted with labels, with "/" and "/boot" and "SWAP-sda2" being the labels (default configuration for Fedora systems) Boot options are: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.14-115.fc8 ro root=LABEL=/ vga=794 initrd /initrd-2.6.23.14-115.fc8.img I can not paste anything from the actual boot process as no log output is created (no disks are mounted, boot process just hangs)
Can you upload the initrd files [/boot/initrd-<version>.img] from the new and old kernels? Also, were any other packages updated at the same time?
I always do the kernel updates on their own (well, kernel and kernel-devel and kernel-doc) I will upload the initrd but they are unchanged from the RPM (this system runs generic FC8, at least as far as the kernel/initrd and boot scripts go)
Created attachment 294442 [details] The requested "working" initrd from the -107 kernel release I have attached the working initrd for the 2.6.23.14-107.fc8 kernel version. This is the last released kernel/initrd that worked.
Created attachment 294443 [details] The requested "failing" initrd from the -115 kernel release This is the initrd for the 2.6.23.14-115.fc8 kernel that fails to boot.
I believe I found the problem but am unsure as to why it happened. The init script in the initrd under 115 did not load the mbcache.so module, jbd.so, or ext3.so which caused the failure of the mkrootdev. The problem was caused by the fstab having "auto" as the file system type for "/" (Verified now that I have reinstalled with fstab having the file system type set to ext3) Now, as to why the file system type was changed, it is unclear. However, also interesting is that the mkinitrd did not correctly notice that the file system type needed was that of ext3 (after all, it was running on that file system at the time) I am sorry for not having noticed this earlier. I submit that this bus should be "closed" as some sort of user error albeit it would be interesting to look into mkinitrd as to a way to prevent this user error in the future.