Yet another "could not find filesystem '/dev/root' " problem on F7.

[[H]omer]

Hate to be just another "MeToo", but ...

Mine's a Via Epia (Mk1) which installed and ran FC5 no problem.

I'm using LVM2 on the Via PATA controller, and everything is pretty standard for this board, as I said - no problems with FC5.

But with F7:


The i386 LiveCD spontaneously reboots just after loading the kernel
The i386 install DVD installs OK, but then after reboot the boot hangs with "could not find filesystem '/dev/root' "


The most promising solution seemed to be this one:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=433048

But that didn't work at all.

Then I discovered this:

http://ostoolbox.blogspot.com/2007/04/fedora-7-test-4-693-released.html

So it's possible the new libata stuff is responsible.

Oh and please no suggestions about "maxcpus", "noapic", "acpi", etc. I've tried everything right down to waving a rubber chicken ... no joy ... kernel-2.6.21 sucks.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait for the respin.

[RahulSundaram]

omer']Hate to be just another "MeToo", but ...

Mine's a Via Epia (Mk1) which installed and ran FC5 no problem.

I'm using LVM2 on the Via PATA controller, and everything is pretty standard for this board, as I said - no problems with FC5.

But with F7:


The i386 LiveCD spontaneously reboots just after loading the kernel
The i386 install DVD installs OK, but then after reboot the boot hangs with "could not find filesystem '/dev/root' "


The most promising solution seemed to be this one:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=433048

But that didn't work at all.

Then I discovered this:

http://ostoolbox.blogspot.com/2007/04/fedora-7-test-4-693-released.html

So it's possible the new libata stuff is responsible.

Oh and please no suggestions about "maxcpus", "noapic", "acpi", etc. I've tried everything right down to waving a rubber chicken ... no joy ... kernel-2.6.21 sucks.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait for the respin.

Yours is the first report of this problem on the general release of Fedora 7. A whole bunch of issues caused due to the libata changes were fixed during test releases. Unfortunate that it hasnt been fixed on your system. Since this is hardware specfic can you file a bug report in http://bugzilla.redhat.com against anaconda with the hardware details?

[[H]omer]

Actually it's not the first:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=242043

[[H]omer]

As I suspected, it's a kernel (mkinitrd) problem, specifically not supporting LVM in the initrd (and apparently mdadm too).

The fix (untested) is to rebuild the intitrd with:

mkinitrd -v --force-lvm-probe /boot/initrd-$(uname -r)-fixed2.img $(uname -r).

(Use the "--force-raid-probe" switch too, if you are also using raid.)

I'll test it now.

[[H]omer]

Didn't have any effect. :(

[lmo]

man mkinitrd OPTIONS:
-f Allows mkinitrd to overwrite an existing image file.

Possibly, without the -f it won't overwrite the existing one, causing "Didn't have any effect".