Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 440703
Installer completes, but creates insufficient initrd to boot
Last modified: 2008-05-03 16:04:29 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080325 Fedora/2.0.0.13-1.fc8 Firefox/2.0.0.13 Description of problem: This appears to be the same behavior reported in a Fedora Core 2 bug report: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=126953 I installed Fedora 8 x86_64 on a newly added SATA-II drive in my system. The installation process went fine, but when the computer rebooted, Fedora 8 would not load. Instead, it kernel panics and I get this message: VFS: Cannot open root device "sdb1" or unknown-block(0,0) Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions: Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) My drives are partitioned as follows: /dev/sda: 1 NTFS partition running Windows XP /dev/sdb: sdb1: ext3 for Fedora 8 sdb2: 1GB swap sdb3: ext3 for Ubuntu sdb4: NTFS "data" partition I was able to work around the problem by using the suggestion in the above: 1. reboot with the Fedora 8 DVD in the drive 2. enter the recovery mode 3. chroot /mnt/sysimage 4. mkinitrd --preload=scsi_mod --preload=sd_mod --with=ata_piix \ /boot/initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img-sata 2.6.23.1-42.fc8 5. update menu.lst with the following information: title Fedora 8 (Werewolf) root (hd1,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 root=/dev/sdb1 rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img-sata savedefault boot 6. reboot and now the kernel loads Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install Fedora8 x86_64 2. Reboot after installer has finished and kernel will panic Actual Results: Kernel panic; Fedora 8 never finishes startup Expected Results: Fedora 8 should load Additional info: Here is some information about my system's hardware: CPU: Athlon64 3800+ MOTHERBOARD: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe HARD DISKS: 2 SATA-II (3 Gbps) drives MEMORY: 2GB PC3200 DDR GRAPHICS: Nvidia 7600GT (by EVGA)
Is this still a problem in F9 Preview?
I installed F9 preview and I tried to test it out. Again, the installer completed just fine but when I went to boot it, all I receive is this: --------------------------------------- Error 2: Bad file or directory type Press any key to continue... --------------------------------------- Pressing a key returns me to the grub menu where I can load Ubuntu or Windows XP just fine. I am still trying to figure out how to fix this. I have tried numerous changes to menu.lst and none of them seem to make a difference, though I'm honestly not even sure if this is related to menu.lst settings. Once I get this fixed (hopefully I can), I will post with more information about this particular bug report.
I have been able to successfully figure out the "Bad file or directory type" issue from my previous comment. It is caused by bug 443289. I went ahead and installed Fedora 9 preview x86_64 (and let it write grub to the MBR this time to avoid bug 443289) using the live DVD. I was able to successfully boot without needing to make a new initrd, so it appears this issue has been resolved in F9. I believe this bug can be closed at this point.