Re: Installing Debian on late 2008 MacBook Pro
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 6:24 PM, <jsmurf@sdf-eu.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> (This is both an install report and a help request, so I'm cross-posting on
> debian-boot and debian-user.)
>
> I'm trying to install Debian on a late 2008 MacBook Pro.
>
> I had no luck with Debian Etch 4.0r5 (AMD64): the keyboard couln't be set
> correctly (it reacted as if the control key was continuously pressed) and
> the CD drive was not recognized ("No common CD-ROM drive was detected", said
> the installer).
>
> With Debian Lenny RC1 (AMD64), everything was correctly detected. I
> formatted the third partition (/dev/sda3) as a LVM physical volume and
> volume group. I splitted that volume group into two logical volumes, one
> for the root filesystem and one for swap. I had to reboot to sync the MBR
> and GPT tables (in rEFIt), and the install process finished without any
> problems; LILO installed its boot record on /dev/sda3 without complaining,
> and the Linux partition is recognized by rEFIt. However, when I booted the
> system, LILO loaded the kernel, but it failed miserably at the very
> beginning of the boot process (it's the fifth line it prints):
>
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
> unknown-block(253,1)
>
> I rebooted with the install disk in rescue mode to debug the problem. My
> first idea was that the LVM module was not build into the kernel, which
> could prevent Linux to access the LVM partition. I was right, so I compiled
> a new kernel:
>
> apt-get install linux-source-2.6.26
> cat /boot/config-2.6.26-1-amd64 | sed -e
> 's/CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=m/CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=y/' > .config
> make-kpkg --initrd --revision foo kernel_image
> dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.26_foo.deb
>
> The boot process indeed goes a few steps further, but fails again:
>
> RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
> VFS: Cannot open root device "fd01" or unknown-block(253,1)
> Please append correct "root=" boot option; here are the available
> partitions:
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
> unknown-block(253,1)
>
> I then tried to add the ext2, ext3 and cramfs modules in the system, but
> with no more luck.
>
> I also tried various configurations for LILO, again with no luck:
> - root=/dev/mapper/vg-root (default setup by Debian installer)
> - append="root=/dev/mapper/vg-root"
> - root=/dev/ram0 append="lvm2root=/dev/mapper/vg-root"
> - append="root=/dev/ram0 lvm2root=/dev/mapper/vg-root"
>
> When the "root=/dev/ram0" option is passed to the kernel, I get IIRC the
> following error:
>
> RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
> VFS: Cannot open root device 100 or unknown-block(0,0)
> Please append correct "root=" boot option; here are the available
> partitions:
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
> unknown-block(0,0)
>
> and with "root=/dev/mapper/vg-root" I get:
>
> RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
> VFS: Cannot open root device "mapper/vg-root" or unknown-block(0,0)
> Please append correct "root=" boot option; here are the available
> partitions:
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
> unknown-block(0,0)
>
> Any ideas?
By no means an expert, but if the installer boots, have you tried
breaking out into a shell / rescue mode, finding out what modules are
loaded, and compiling them in? Dirty, but may just work...
What is your lilo config? Are you sure your initrd is being found?
M
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