EVMS boot problems

scorgatelli · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2006 Posts: 3

I'm in the process of setting up a new gentoo (2005.1) box and decided to use evms. I generally followed the evms wiki guide (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_setup_evms) except I didn't use any of the raid stuff since I currently only have one disk.

I've got it all set up but cannot boot into my box. When I boot up, the initrd appears to work fine. Evms is activated and the root directory is mounted. However when the boot process gets to the checkroot stage it fails complaining that /dev/evms/root could not be found. After logging in at the debug prompt, I check and the root directory appears to be mounted but there are no devices listed in /dev/evms.

I've reviewed other posts, and it seems that there are other people having the problem. I've tried a bunch of the suggestions that I've found with no luck. Here is some of the things I've tried:

Created the /initrd directory
Added start_volumes to /etc/init.d/checkroot
Set RC_VOLUME_ORDER="evms"
Applied the bd_claim patch (from the evms package)

I've also tried remounting the root directory as read/write and running evms_activate. This didn't help either. When I run evmsn from the debug console all I get is the pluggins screen. No devices, volumes, etc. I've also tried activating evms from within the chrooted install environment with no luck. (I don't know if this matters, but inside the chrooted environment /dev/evms is also empty). So, in short, EVMS works great from the LiveCD and the initrd, but no where else.

I'm using the 2005.1 Universal install, gentoo-sources-2.6.12-r10 and genkernel to compile the kernel and create the initrd. I'm running under the AMD64 architecture.

I probably just missed something. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Shane

Tarch · n00b Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 42

Bye I'm able to get the evms working without the genkernel script, I modified a script that I found to create the right initrd (maybe I can post it so you can try with that). Can you post some output or maybe a screenshot taken with a digital camera (you can use imageshack.us to host freely the images). Can you post something more about the configuration of your pc?

Bye! =)

vputz · Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:10 pm Post subject:

Shane--

I just finished converting two existing gentoo installations to EVMS (icnluding one which like yours has the boot drive under EVMS).

What was happening to me is, like in your setup, the initrd worked but once things hit checkroot, the whole operation bombed. The key to me was that the bomb referred to my root partition as /dev/evms/hda3 when it was really supposed to be named /dev/evms/root.

There's a note at the bottom of the "howto setup EVMS" wiki page (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_setup_evms) which has you put the line "[[ -z ${CDBOOT} ]] && start_volumes" into /etc/init.d/checkroot. This worked for me and the machine boots beautifully. Give that a shot (see the wiki, bottom of the page, "Change Checkroot").

-->VPutz

scorgatelli · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2006 Posts: 3

We'll see how this works. I'm posting from links.

Tarch, I've tried putting start_volumes in the checkroot script. Didn't do any good. I have also tried putting the same thing in /sbin/rc in the populate_udev function again with no luck.

vputz, I would be very interested in trying the script that you used to generate the initrd. So far I've tried the genkernel as well as the generic initrd provided on the evms website. Neither have worked and I get the same failure with both of them. I get to the checkroot stage and it says that /dev/evms/root is not found or that it has a bad superblock. When I log in to the debugging prompt /dev/evms/root is not there, but the root filesystem is mounted.

I'm not sure exactly what information your looking for, so I hope the following helps.

Linux: gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r5
I've enabled the following relevant items in the kernel config:

jschellhaass · Guru Joined: 20 Jan 2004 Posts: 341

Did you ever resolve this problem?

jeff

oizone · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2004 Posts: 55 Location: Finland

My workaround (a bit dirty but works) was to modify the begininning of /etc/init.d/checkroot from:

jschellhaass · Guru Joined: 20 Jan 2004 Posts: 341

If you boot from the livecd with doevms2 on the boot line would evms be activated properly or did it require an evms_activate command after it booted?

jeff

oizone · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2004 Posts: 55 Location: Finland

scorgatelli · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2006 Posts: 3

I finally got this working. I've listed what I did below.

I upgraded to the latest unstable base-layout. I found from the evms mail list that this incorporates the necessary evms activation stuff. I think all this did was make it so I didn't have to edit my checkroot init script manually.
I removed my /etc/mtab file. The gentoo install docs said to copy /proc/mounts to /etc/mtab before running grub-install. I did this but didn't remove the mtab file after. When I rebooted the mtab never had a chance to get overwritten (I think because of the evms failures) and so when I ran mount it showed all of the livecd stuff as still being mounted.
EVMS still failed at this point so I logged in under the debugging prompt and ran the following:

Code:

mount -o remount,rw /
evms-activate

Previously this failed to work, but after removing the bad mtab file (as described above) evms-activate worked fine and created the correct device nodes.
Rebooted.

After that everything has worked fine.

Thanks for the help.

-Shane