Created attachment 323523 [details] The patch to fix boot random failure when root=/dev/sdaXXX Description of problem: I have T61 notebook with FedoraCore 8 x86-64 installed. With kernel 2.6.28-rc, system boot fails. Then, I try it on another Nehalem machine with Fedora Core 9 installed and system also boot fails. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Use the config file of FC8/FC9 kernel to compile kernel 2.6.28-rc4. Then boot kernel with root=LABEL=/, system always can't boot. initrd init reports switchroot fails. If boot with root=/dev/sda1, system boot randomly fails. Mostly, boot for 5 times and fails once. Another guy reports the same issue with his notebook. Steps to Reproduce: 1.Use the config file of FC8/FC9 kernel to compile kernel 2.6.28-rc4 2.#make modules_install install 3.#reboot 4. If root=/dev/sdaXXX, change it to root=LABEL=/ (depends on the real label on your system). retry. Actual results: with root=LABEL=/, system always can't boot. initrd init reports switchroot fails. If boot with root=/dev/sda1, system boot randomly fails. Expected results: System should always boot successfully. Additional info: I instrument kernel and nash and locate the root cause. I worked out 2 patches for nash and 1 patch for kernel 2.6.28-rc4. Pls. go through http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11899
Created attachment 323524 [details] Patch to fix boot failure with root=LABEL=/ If we need boot system with root=LABEL=/, we need this patch and previous patch. Both them need to be applied to nash. In addition, we need a kernel. I will attach it.
Created attachment 323525 [details] Here is the kernel patch If we fix boot failure when root=LABEL=/, we need apply previous 2 patches to nash, and this patch to kernel 2.6.28-rc4.
Created attachment 323544 [details] New patch for kernel to register MAJOR 259 as a block device New patch for kernel to register MAJOR 259 as a block device Thank Tejun Heo and Alexey Dobriyan for their good comments. The new patch moves the registration to genhd_device_init.
Is there anything still needed here? The first part I know is taken care of with current mkinitrd
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