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Re: grub floppy fails to boot



Haines Brown wrote:
> The object is to boot a new installation of debian sarge, filesystem
> reiserfs, from a grub (0.95+cvs20040624-8) boot loader installed on a
> diskette. Grub has not yet been installed on the target disk because I
> want the security of a boot floppy in case it gums things up when I do
> install it (I assume that a grub boot floppy does not need to have
> grub installed on the hard disk).
> 
> This diskette boots my current system (debian sarge, reiserfs) just
> fine. And the bootloader on my current disk (sda) MBR can boot the
> target disk (sdc). It's only using the boot floopy to boot the target
> disk that I get into trouble. 
> 
> At this point I'm trying to understand the set of boot error messages
> associated with a kernel panic when try to use it to boot the target
> disk:  
> 
>     1. kmod failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8 errno=2
> 
> Is this message relevant? This is a new installation of sarge and so
> I've not yet run depmod -a to create the module database. So is this
> error to be expected at this point? Or is it a hint of trouble? I
> assume the reiserfs driver is in the kernel and does not require being
> loaded by modprobe. The program /sbin/modprobe exists on sdc. I've no
> idea what errno=2 is.

Reiserfs is a module and you need to have grub load the initrd that goes
with your kernel.

> With the target disk (sdc1) mounted on my running system (sda), I did
> try to run depmod from a chroot. Although I do have
> /lib/modules/2.6.7-1-386 directory on the target disk (sdc), when I
> try to create a module database from chroot:  
> 
>   :/# depmod -a
>   depmod: Can't open /lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/modules.dep for writing 
>
> It seems depmod is looking at the running system (sda), which uses
> kernel 2.4.18-bf2.4, rather than the target system with which has the
> 2.6.7-1-386 kernel. Is this behavior to be expected? 

Depmod defaults to running for the currently running kernel yes.

Your problem has nothing to do with depmod, however.

> 	2. VFS: Cannot open root devices "sdc1" or 08:21
> 
> The device I want to mount is definitely sdc1.

This is because you didn't load the initrd, the kernel you've booted has
no disk drivers built into it.

> Is it possible that the mount failure results from there being no
> reiserfs driver present? I added reiserfs_stage1_5 to the /boot/grub
> directory on the diskette, but it didn't help.

You're confusing grub filesystem modules and kernel filesystem modules,
these are two very different things.

-- 
see shy jo

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