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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2006 11:52 pm    Post subject: Grub.conf and root partition Reply with quote

Hi all,

I'm trying to install a new gentoo installation in parallel to my current one, but I'm having
some trouble with grub. My current system has a boot partition on hda2 and root on hda5, the
new puts the kernel in the same boot partition, but has root on hdd1. I want to run a multiboot
system, until the new install is up to speed, so I added the new install to grub.conf (which already
worked for dual boot XP/Gentoo). The result looks like this:

Code:

Code listing 23.4: grub.conf for GRUB
default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz



# 2.6.7 kernel (old install)
#-------------
title=Gentoo (2.6.7)
root(hd0,1)
kernel /boot/bzImage-2.6.7.r8_150704 ro hdc=ide-cd vga=normal


# 2.6.16 kernel (new install)
#--------------
title=Gentoo (2.6.16)
root(hd0,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.16-260506 ro root=/dev/hdd1



Weird thing is, the old grub.conf worked, though I now realize I never told the kernel where to find
the root partition (hda5). But that's not what's bothering me right now, the main problem is that my
new intstall won't boot correctly: I get the following error message:

Code:

VFS:  Cannot open root device "hdd1" or unknown-block (0,0)
Please append a correct "root" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing VFS unable to mount root from unknown-block (0,0)


The partition hdd1 exists (first partition on the second harddisk), and contains a well-installed directory
tree on a reiserfs. Reiserfs support is not modular, it's been compiled into the kernel, so there should be
no problem there.
Now my question is whether I'm doing something wrong in grub here, or whether there's something wrong
with my kernel. Any ideas?
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morodoch
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PostPosted: Sun May 28, 2006 7:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just guessing, but here're a couple:

1. the kernel has an embedded boot partition in it, IIRC from the bad old days - the command line parameter merely overrides this
2. is the new hard drive on a different controller, one for which your kernel doesn't have a built-in driver? If you built the driver as
a module, you'll need to use a ramdisc to boot.
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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Sun May 28, 2006 12:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

morodoch wrote:
Just guessing, but here're a couple:
1. the kernel has an embedded boot partition in it, IIRC from the bad old days - the command line parameter merely overrides this


Hmm. It's the vanilla-source package I emerged using portage. Is there a kernel option which controls this? And why doesn't
the command line parameter override it correctly? Maybe I should try with genkernel. Is there a package for installing the livecd
kernel? Maybe that would help.

morodoch wrote:

2. is the new hard drive on a different controller, one for which your kernel doesn't have a built-in driver? If you built the driver as
a module, you'll need to use a ramdisc to boot.


I'd be surprised by that. The livecd had no trouble finding the drive. The second drive is on the secondary IDE connector, but it
would be weird if the motherboard would use different controllers for it, wouldn't it?
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bekkra
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PostPosted: Sun May 28, 2006 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To my ears, "hdd" sounds as the FOURTH ATA drive, yet you say that the root partition is on the SECOND, which should be hdb.

My guess is thus that you should try 'root=/dev/hdb1' on the kernel command line, as this would mean the "first partition on the second harddisk", as you wrote . Should this fail, I advise you to give us your partition listing as in
Code:
$ fdisk -l

//
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Last edited by bekkra on Sun May 28, 2006 12:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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morodoch
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PostPosted: Sun May 28, 2006 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AFAIK the livecd boots with a ramdisc, and loads the modules from that, but you're right about the controller for the first and second hard drives - I'd expect them to be the same (unless one is, say, a raid controller).

I use genkernel and coldplug - it works for me:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/genkernel.xml
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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2006 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bekkra wrote:
To my ears, "hdd" sounds as the FOURTH ATA drive, yet you say that the root partition is on the SECOND, which should be hdb.

My guess is thus that you should try 'root=/dev/hdb1' on the kernel command line, as this would mean the "first partition on the second harddisk", as you wrote . Should this fail, I advise you to give us your partition listing as in
Code:
$ fdisk -l

//


IDE primary master is hda, my first harddisk containing the boot partition
IDE secondary master is hdc, my dvd writer
IDE secondary slave is hdd, my second harddisk, containing the root partition

Output for fdisk -l:
Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1        3824    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2   *        3825        3833       72292+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            3834        3896      506047+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda4            3897        9729    46853572+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5            3897        4875     7863786   83  Linux
/dev/hda6            5442        9729    34443328+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7            4876        5441     4546363+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hdd: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdd1               1         852     6843658+  83  Linux
/dev/hdd2            7297        9729    19543072+  83  Linux
/dev/hdd3            9730       12162    19543072+  83  Linux
/dev/hdd4           12163       14593    19527007+  83  Linux


Gentoo livecd finds them like that as well.
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troymc
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2006 8:16 pm    Post subject: Re: Grub.conf and root partition Reply with quote

Iskendar wrote:

Code:

VFS:  Cannot open root device "hdd1" or unknown-block (0,0)



This means your new kernel has no idea what kind of device "hdd1" is. That is why it defaults to mapping it to (0,0) instead of (22,65).

I would go with morodoch's suggestion and make sure your new kernel has the correct drivers built in or that your initrd is loading them.


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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2006 8:32 pm    Post subject: Re: Grub.conf and root partition Reply with quote

troymc wrote:
Iskendar wrote:

Code:

VFS:  Cannot open root device "hdd1" or unknown-block (0,0)



This means your new kernel has no idea what kind of device "hdd1" is. That is why it defaults to mapping it to (0,0) instead of (22,65).

I would go with morodoch's suggestion and make sure your new kernel has the correct drivers built in or that your initrd is loading them.


Neat. Problem is I have no idea how to do this. What drivers could cause this, I've never had this problem before?
The motherboard is an old Shuttle one with an intel chipset, nothing fancy. And as far as initrd is concerned, if I look
at the gentoo docs you're not supposed to add an initrd line to grub.conf anymore. So how do I do this coincretely?
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2006 8:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As a first test, you might try booting your new system with the old kernel. That will ensure that all the drivers are the same.

To do this, simply change the grub.conf kernel line for your new entry to have the old kernel name.

This will isolate the problem to your new kernel 100%.



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bekkra
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2006 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Could it be that the secondary controller is on a special chip that you need drivers for ?

I think if you dump the PCI bus with the live CD, we might know that.
Code:
lspci
(Yes, I know you know this, but we must try the very basic things, don't we ;) )

Next, I'd also try to use the .config from a working kernel. While
Code:
make oldconfig
is a good idea, it is probably less so between so different kernels. Still, it might be worth a shot...

//
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Maclaud
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2006 12:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hello All
i'm also getting the same message of kernel panic, only that i'm working with 2 sata hardisks, i recheck the menuconfig options and it seems to me that there are the same as when i compiled a 2.6.14-r2 kernel which boot ok with the root=/dev/sda3
maybe same vital option change place in the menuconfig and i miss it
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morodoch
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2006 8:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Neat. Problem is I have no idea how to do this. What drivers could cause this, I've never had this problem before?
The motherboard is an old Shuttle one with an intel chipset, nothing fancy. And as far as initrd is concerned, if I look
at the gentoo docs you're not supposed to add an initrd line to grub.conf anymore. So how do I do this coincretely?


If you follow the genkernel howto, you'll end up with a kernel with drivers for just about everything built - this will take longer to compile - but will only load drivers for the hardware you have at run-time, using coldplug:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/genkernel.xml

HTH

*EDIT*

Actually, I think I was thinking of the genkernel section in the install handbook:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=7#doc_chap4
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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2006 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bekkra wrote:
Could it be that the secondary controller is on a special chip that you need drivers for ?

I think if you dump the PCI bus with the live CD, we might know that.
Code:
lspci
(Yes, I know you know this, but we must try the very basic things, don't we ;) )

Apparently it's a SiS chipset, not an intel one. Still, nothing special:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 651 Host (rev 01)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 04)
0000:00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0016
0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
0000:00:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:10.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV25 [GeForce4 Ti 4200] (rev a3)


bekkra wrote:

Next, I'd also try to use the .config from a working kernel. While
Code:
make oldconfig
is a good idea, it is probably less so between so different kernels. Still, it might be worth a shot...

//


Tried it, same problem. Of course, my old kernel was 2.6.7 and the new one is 2.6.16, so it was to be expected something would go wrong.
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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bump

Come on guys: people tell me it might be a controller driver problem, might as well tell me where to
find these drivers in the kernel menuconfig. Seriously, what category drivers am I looking for? Using
genkernel may be a solution, but I'm using gentoo to learn to understand linux better, so I want to
know WHY this isn't working.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Iskendar wrote:
Bump

Come on guys: people tell me it might be a controller driver problem, might as well tell me where to
find these drivers in the kernel menuconfig. Seriously, what category drivers am I looking for? Using
genkernel may be a solution, but I'm using gentoo to learn to understand linux better, so I want to
know WHY this isn't working.


Sure, happy to oblige. :D

This MIGHT be a controller driver problem.

The drivers for this are:

Code:

Device Drivers --->
    ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support  --->
        <*>         SiS5513 chipset support


If this is the Shuttle SS40 (the first AMD Shuttle w/ FS40 mb) then I have the exact same one.

All the hardware on it works fine, in fact I've just now had my first problem with it and it's been running for years. (powersupply went out)



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Iskendar
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 1:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

troymc wrote:


Sure, happy to oblige. :D

This MIGHT be a controller driver problem.

The drivers for this are:

Code:

Device Drivers --->
    ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support  --->
        <*>         SiS5513 chipset support



Ok, didn't have that, thanks. Still, tried it, same error. I don't get it. Maybe I should start
asking on kerneltrap or something. Thanks anyway.

Quote:

If this is the Shuttle SS40 (the first AMD Shuttle w/ FS40 mb) then I have the exact same one.

All the hardware on it works fine, in fact I've just now had my first problem with it and it's been running for years. (powersupply went out)


No, it's a SS51G, P4 model. Works great normally, and I've been through a bunch of kernels
without problems. Like I said, I don't get it.
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