Hi,
Just got Fedora FC1 vanilla 2.4.25kernel+libata8patch booting problems, FC1 complains that it can not automatically find&found partitions specified with "LABEL=" in /etc/fstab, and then falls me into repair mode. In the repair mode I can mount it manually without any problems. More interesting are: 1) I have several partitions specified with "LABEL=*" in /etc/fstab, but FC1 always can not identify same partition even on different machines; 2) the default&upgraded ntpl kernel boots up without problems. My fstab is attached below:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/0 /0 ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/hdc1 /1 ext3 defaults 1 2 LABEL=/alexa /alexa ext3 defaults 1 2 none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1 2 LABEL=/var /var ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/hda8 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0 ops-test1.alexa.com guolin 134%
FC1 stops on partitions "LABEL=/var" on two machines, stops on partition "LABEL=/" on the 3rd machine. While the default|upgraded NTPL kernel (with SMP problem) boots without a glitch, my vanilla 2.4.25 kernel plus libata patch 2.4.25-libata8 fails with the above symptoms described.
The solution to fix it is: manually run "e2fsck -y -f /dev/hd?, tune2fs -j /dev/hd?; e2label /dev/hd? <LABEL>" again even there is no problem with file system, journal node and ext2 label, then reboot.
SInce we have several hundreds of RH8 machines to upgrade to Fedora, we can not endure to fix booting problem one by one, So where is the problem? File system utilites? 2.4.25 kernel? or the libata patch?
The machines has Fedora Core 1 with all packages upgraded: util-linux-2.11y-29, e2fsprogs-1.34-1, 2.4.25+2.4.25-libata8.
The system disk's partitions were originally created under Redhat 8.0. This upgrade to FC1 is as simple as: booting the machines into a FC1 diskless mode, then create file system on existing /, /usr, /var partitions resides on system disk, label 3 partitions and and dump system tarballs onto them, install lilo bootload onto system disk and reboot. The simple&efficient way works great for years for us except this time. :(
Any suggestions? and what's the difference between 2.4.25-libata8 patch and 2.4.25-libata16 (bleeding-edge) patches?
Thanks a lot.
--Guolin Cheng
I think you need to set BSD disklabel support in the Partition Types section of the kernel config.
Didn't you use a RH config as the starting point?
-- Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK E-mail : nmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555
