Bug#433127: system unbootable after update to linux-image-2.6.21-2
Hello,
"/dev/hda1 does not exist" is a wide field but since I encountered the
same symptoms and worked around them, I can hopefully narrow it down a
bit.
I encountered the problem on two machines out of eight after upgrading
(2.6.18-4 worked fine on both). One is an old P2-300 box with soft RAID
over two IDE drives, the other a newer Xeon server with soft RAID over
two SCSI drives on a Fusion-MPT controller. Relevant packages (identical
on both machines) are
Package: linux-image-2.6.21-2-686
Version: 2.6.21-6
Package: initramfs-tools
Version: 0.89
Ok, this is what can be seen on the console: The hardware drivers are
loaded and report their findings (chipsets etc.). Then the md driver
attempts to assemble its RAID, and fails because it cannot find disk
devices. Then the root device (which should have been md0) is not found,
and the rootfs mount fails. Then the disk drivers happily announce what
disks and partitions they have found. Then the boot aborts and drops to
a shell. Notice the order?
What looks like a race condition is easily confirmed by using the
"rootdelay=nsecs" parameter of initramfs-tools. Give the drivers a few
seconds to finish their initialization, and the boot process continues
just fine.
Stefan, it might be helpful if you tried setting a rootdelay and
reported if that works around the problem for you.
Now why there is this race with .21 that was not there with .18, I leave
for the kernel-knowledgable people to find out. I'm not even sure it's a
bug after all but it is definitely a feature that needs to be addressed,
or we will be seing a lot of non-booting machines (worst case, randomly
non-booting).
Greetings,
Ralph
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