Basically, install process seems to go fine, however the machine doesn't wan't to boot after it.
The system in question has one of I2O Adaptec RAID controllers. I've configured LVM with one volume group and several volumes. If I boot into the rescue mode, all looks fine and dandy. Anaconda finds the installation, and I can access all volumes.
However, when doing "real" boot, it gets into trouble. All required modules are loaded from initrd image (as far as I can tell). The I2O modules are able to locate the RAID devices (I see all partitions reported: /dev/i2o/hda1 (empty, unused), /dev/i2o/hdb1 (/boot), and /dev/i2o/hdb2 (rest of the system under LVM). The only thing different from rescue mode is that i2o/hda and i2o/hdb are reversed (this is strange, but it shouldn't affect things since /boot partition has a label "/boot", and all the rest is under LVM, so everything should be device name independent). I have no idea why i2o device drivers are detecting volumes in different order when loaded from initrd image during boot, and by Anaconda during installation.
The last couple of messages printed on the screen are:
Creating root device Mounting root file system kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. mount: error 2 mounting none Switching to new root WARNING: can't access (null) exec of init ((null)) failed!!!: 14 umount /initrd/dev failed: 2 Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Looking at the "init" script from initrd image, this correspond to:
echo Mounting root filesystem mount -o defaults --ro -t ext3 /dev/root /sysroot mount -t tmpfs --bind /dev /sysroot/dev echo Switching to new root switchroot /sysroot umount /initrd/dev
Which would indicate that mount of root file system went OK, but then it failed to mount /dev filesystem (basically, move already mounted /dev to /sysroot/dev). After the switchroot /sysroot, old /dev mount point become invalid (non-accessible), the new /dev mount point was not there and of course everything broke from that point on.
I've Googled around a bit, and the only relevant thing Google gave me was this French page. There were couple of more pages (some from archives of Fedora/RH mailing lists) with similar but different problem (modules failing to load and/or detect disk drives, which is not the case here, all modules were loaded correctly as witnessed by successfull LVM initialization and successfull root file system mount).
http://www.fedora-france.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3838&forum=6&post_id=20970
I do live in Canada, but don't speak a word of French (shame on me, but in my defense it is on my todo list). However I did managed to figure out somebody suggested going with Grub instead of LILO. IMO, Grub or LILO shouldn't make any difference, since the error is happening way after boot loader did its job. Anyhow, just for fun, I reinstalled the system from scratch, this time choosing Grub as boot loader of choice to be installed into MBR. However, for whatever reason, Anaconda did not install Grub (dd & less showed no signs of Grub in MBR). Boot into the rescue, chroot, grub-install, OK now I have Grub in MBR. But again, no joy. Grub doesn't even start and system simply hangs in mid-air. No errors printed, no anything.
Currently, I'm kind of stuck and idea-less. The system did worked perfectly in the past with Red Hat 7.3 (and LILO as boot loader), and exactly the same hardware RAID configuration (two volumes, one for system, one for data). Any help, hint, etc would be greatly appriciated.
-- Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@xxxxxx> Pollard Banknote Limited Systems Administrator 1499 Buffalo Place Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276 Winnipeg, MB R3T 1L7
