--- Begin Message ---
Subject: kernel: Kernel 2.6.16 attempts to access root device before running initramfs init
Package: kernel
Severity: important
After upgrading from 2.6.15-1-powerpc to 2.6.16-2-powerpc I received the
message "VFS: Cannot open root device /dev/sda8 or
unknown-block(somenumber, somenumber)"
I checked the initrd and it contains the necessary modules, but none of the
initrd's console messages appear on the console before the error message
which leads me to believe that the kernel is attempting to look at the root
device before loading the module needed to see it. The root device requires
the mesh module (scsi hba) which is in the initrd.
I have confirmed that the failed boot stops at the point where the initrd
is loaded by carefully watching the boot messages with a working boot
with 2.6.15. The point where the initramfs (initrd-xxx.img) is loaded appears
to be after the freeing memory line.
I indicate where the VFS: message appears during an unsuccesfull booth
with
-->2.6.16 dies here<--
in the dmesg output below (from a successful boot of 2.6.15)
Total memory = 96MB; using 256kB for hash table (at c0340000)
Linux version 2.6.15-1-powerpc (Debian 2.6.15-8) (waldi@debian.org) (gcc version 4.0.3 20060304 (prerelease) (Debian 4.0.2-10)) #2 Mon Mar 6 12:39:17 CET 2006
Found a OHare mac-io controller, rev: 1, mapped at 0xfddc0000
PowerMac motherboard: Unknown OHare-based
Cache coherency enabled for bandit/PSX
Found Bandit PCI host bridge at 0xf2000000. Firmware bus number: 0->0
nvram: OF partition at 0x1800
nvram: XP partition at 0x1300
nvram: NR partition at 0x1400
On node 0 totalpages: 24576
DMA zone: 24576 pages, LIFO batch:7
DMA32 zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:0
Normal zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:0
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:0
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda8 ro
System has 32 possible interrupts
PID hash table entries: 512 (order: 9, 8192 bytes)
GMT Delta read from XPRAM: -240 minutes, DST: on
via_calibrate_decr: ticks per jiffy = 10000 (600019 ticks)
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
serial8250_console_init: nothing to do on PowerMac
Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Memory: 88376k available (2172k kernel code, 920k data, 172k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay loop... 318.46 BogoMIPS (lpj=159232)
Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
SELinux: Disabled at boot.
Capability LSM initialized
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
checking if image is initramfs... it is
Freeing initrd memory: 5354k freed
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 1 of device 0000:00:11.0
Registering pmac pic with sysfs...
Thermal assist unit not available
audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
audit(1151007009.660:1): initialized
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
Initializing Cryptographic API
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler anticipatory registered
io scheduler deadline registered
io scheduler cfq registered
PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:11.0 (0082 -> 0083)
atyfb: ATI264VTA4 (Mach64 VT) [0x5654 rev 0x40]
atyfb: 2M EDO, 14.31818 MHz XTAL, 200 MHz PLL, 63 Mhz MCLK, 67 MHz XCLK
atyfb: monitor sense=51e, mode 7
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
atyfb: fb0: ATY Mach64 frame buffer device on PCI
Generic RTC Driver v1.07
Macintosh non-volatile memory driver v1.1
serial8250_init: nothing to do on PowerMac
pmac_zilog: 0.6 (Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>)
ttyS0 at MMIO 0xf3013020 (irq = 15) is a Z85c30 ESCC - Serial port
ttyS1 at MMIO 0xf3013000 (irq = 16) is a Z85c30 ESCC - Serial port
fd0: SWIM3 floppy controller
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize
MacIO PCI driver attached to OHare chipset
Can't request resource 0 for MacIO device 0.f3000000:ohare
input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /class/input/input0
Macintosh CUDA driver v0.5 for Unified ADB.
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
adb: starting probe task...
ide0: Found Apple OHare ATA controller, bus ID 0, irq 13
Probing IDE interface ide0...
adb devices: [2]: 2 1b [3]: 3 1
ADB keyboard at 2, handler set to 3
Detected ADB keyboard, type ANSI.
input: ADB keyboard as /class/input/input1
ADB mouse at 3, handler set to 2
input: ADB mouse as /class/input/input2
adb: finished probe task...
ide1: Found Apple OHare ATA controller, bus ID 1, irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: MATSHITA CR-585, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: Enabling MultiWord DMA 1
ide1 at 0xc701c000-0xc701c007,0xc701c160 on irq 14
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
TCP reno registered
TCP bic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
-->2.6.16 dies here<--
Freeing unused kernel memory: 172k init
SCSI subsystem initialized
mesh: configured for synchronous 5 MB/s
mesh: performing initial bus reset...
scsi0 : MESH
mesh: target 0 synchronous at 5.0 MB/s
Vendor: IBM Model: DPSS-309170M Rev: S93E
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
SCSI device sda: 17916240 512-byte hdwr sectors (9173 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 17916240 512-byte hdwr sectors (9173 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
sda: [mac] sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 sda9 sda10
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27
PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:0f.0 (0004 -> 0007)
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0x400, 00:50:ba:5b:9d:85, IRQ 25
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'
hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
Attempting manual resume
Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
Adding 327672k swap on /dev/sda9. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:327672k
input: PowerMac Beep as /class/input/input3
device-mapper: 4.4.0-ioctl (2005-01-12) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
eth0: link up, 10Mbps, half-duplex, lpa 0x0000
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (5, 'unstable')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-1-powerpc
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
--- End Message ---