sarge: 2.6.14 kernel panics on boot
I am having problems with a 2.6.14 kernel.
I have two x86 machines, A and B. They do not have identical hardware.
Machine A is running Debian woody with a 2.4.28 kernel. There is
nothing on machine B at this point.
I did a tar -zcvf of everything on machine A, then I did tar -zxvf of
that tar file on machine B. So, A and B have exactly the same
configuration.
Then I did aptitude dist-upgrade on machine B. The upgrade was
successful (I just had to edit perhaps two or three configuration
files).
Now the next step on machine B is to upgrade from a 2.4.x kernel to a
2.6.x kernel. I downloaded the 2.6.14 kernel source from
ftp.kernel.org. I did make config and I built the kernel with the
make-kpkg method. This gave me the following files:
/boot/System.map-2.6.14
/boot/config-2.6.14
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14
/boot/initrd.img-2.6.14
Machine B boots succesfully on this 2.6.14 kernel
Since the upgrade to sarge and to the 2.6.x kernel on machine B were
succesfull, I started upgrading machine A too.
I did aptitude dist-upgrade on machine A. Like with machine B, the
upgrade was successful, just a few configuration files to edit.
The next step is to upgrade the kernel on machine A from 2.4.x to 2.6.x.
At first I installed the 2.6.14 kernel source from kernel.org in
/usr/src/linux-2.6.14.
I took the .config from machine B and put it in /usr/src/linux-2.6.14
on machine A.
I built the kernel on A with the make-kpkg tool, installed it but at
boot I get a kernel panic (you'll see the details below).
Then, since A and B have the very same setup, I took the four files
from machine B:
/boot/System.map-2.6.14
/boot/config-2.6.14
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14
/boot/initrd.img-2.6.14
I have copied these four files from machine B to machine A. So both
machines have exactly the same kernel and initrd. md5sum is the same
for these four files. /lib/modules/2.6.14 is populated.
Here is the entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst on machine A:
title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.14
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz- 2.6.14 root=/dev/ataraid/d0p7 ro
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.14
savedefault
boot
But, when I boot machine A with this 2.6.14 kernel, I get:
RAMDISK: cramfs filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 2144 KiB [1 disk] into ram disk... done
mount: unknown filesystem type 'devfs'
umount: devfs: not mounted
mount: unknown filesystem type 'devfs'
umount: devfs: not mounted
pivot_root: No such file or directory
/sbin/init: 432: cannot open dev/console: No such file
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
You're gonna say "Well, just remove devfs from the kernel, you don't need it".
But in 2.6.14 there is no devfs, it's completely gone. "make config"
never asks you about devfs.
This problem is very puzzling: how can two machines with very same
software configuration yield so different results ?
Regarding the kernel compilation, I tried building the kernel both
with make-kpkg and the "handmade" way, it does not solve the problem.
Perhaps is it an hardware problem.
Machine A has a ATA/RAID controller while machine B has a normal IDE
controller. But:
1) I did include the required ATA/RAID drivers in the 2.6.14 kernel,
both on machine A and machine B. Again, it's the very same kernel:
machine B doesn't need the ATA/RAID driver, but it doesn't hurt if
it's present.
2) If you look at the boot process on machine A, you can see "VFS:
Mounted root (cramfs filesystem) readonly. initrd-tools: 0.1.81.1".
This means machine A is able to mount its root filesystem and its
initrd image.
Last thing: I don't know if it's related, but when I install the
kernel on machine A with "dpkg -i
kernel-image-2.6.14_10.00.Custom_i386.deb", I get the following error
message:
Setting up kernel-image-2.6.14 (10.00.Custom) ...
/usr/sbin/mkinitrd: add_modules_dep_2_5: modprobe failed
FATAL: Module hptraid not found.
FATAL: Module pdcraid not found.
WARNING: This failure MAY indicate that your kernel will not boot!
but it can also be triggered by needed modules being compiled into
the kernel.
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Alex
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