I've experienced the /dev/root kernel panic that a lot of folks have experienced. I get the following during my boot process: Trying to resume from /dev/hdc1 No suspend signature on swap, not resuming. Creating root device. Mounting root filesystem. mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root' Setting up other filesustems. Setting up new foor fs setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory Switching to ew root and running init. unmounting old /dev unmounting old /proc unmounting old /sys switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory Kernel panic - not syncing: No such file or directory [<c011a32e>] panic+0x3e/0x170 [<c011cede>] do_exit+0x71/0x6c8 [<c011d5b9>] sys_exit_group+0x0/0xd [<c0102bc1>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb I'm not using LVMs on my linux drive. It's a 320 gig Western Digital drive with an 8 gig swap partition and the rest is the root file system. I'm using lilo v 22.6 on Fedora Core 5 and I've not switched to grub only because I'm trying to figure out how to migrate from lilo to grub. My current lilo.conf file: boot = /dev/hda timeout = 50 prompt default = linux vga = 0x318 read-only map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2139_FC5 label=2.6.17-1.2139_F append="mem=1024M" initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2139_FC5.img root=/dev/hdc2 image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17.3 label=linux append="mem=1024M" initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.17.3.img root=/dev/hdc2 image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.16.19 label=linux-prev append="mem=1024M" initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.16.19.img root=/dev/hdc2 other = /dev/hda1 label = Windows Here's my /etc/fstab. /dev/hda is another 320 gig Western Digital hard drive running Windows XP on VFAT: /dev/hdc2 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/fd0 mnt/floppy auto user,exec,dev,suid,rw,noauto 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 /dev/hdc1 swap swap defaults none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 I did find a solution for it at Linuxquestions.org (see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=433048) and I noticed that in the init file that mkinitrd produces there's a "mount /sysroot" line that seems to be the source of the problem. It should be "mount -o defaults --ro -t ext3 /dev/hdc2 /sysroot" but this doesn't get written out by default. It's trying to mount /dev/root to /sysroot and /dev/root is apparently deprecated in FC5. As per the LinuxQuestions thread I've done the following steps: 1) Boot with the rescue CD 2) Type 'chroot /mnt/sysimage' (wherever it mounts the Fedora 5 partition) 3) 'cd /boot' 4) 'mkdir newinit' 5) 'cd newinit' 6) 'gunzip -c ../initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img | cpio -idmv' 7) 'vi init' 8) Find 'mount /sysroot' (near the end of the file) 9) Delete or comment this out 10) Replace with 'mount -o defaults --ro -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /sysroot' where /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 is the mount point for / 11) ':wq' out of vi 12) 'find . | cpio --quiet -c -o >../newinitrd' 13) 'cd ..' - you are now in /boot 14) 'mv initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.bak' - backup current initrd img file (just in case) 15) 'gzip -9 < newinitrd > initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img' 16) Reboot the computer without the CD My init file that's in the initrd image looks like this: mount -t proc /proc /proc setquiet echo Mounting proc filesystem echo Mounting sysfs filesystem mount -t sysfs /sys /sys echo Creating /dev mount -o mode=0755 -t tmpfs /dev /dev mkdir /dev/pts mount -t devpts -o gid=5,mode=620 /dev/pts /dev/pts mkdir /dev/shm mkdir /dev/mapper echo Creating initial device nodes mknod /dev/null c 1 3 mknod /dev/zero c 1 5 mknod /dev/systty c 4 0 mknod /dev/tty c 5 0 mknod /dev/console c 5 1 mknod /dev/ptmx c 5 2 mknod /dev/rtc c 10 135 mknod /dev/tty0 c 4 0 mknod /dev/tty1 c 4 1 mknod /dev/tty2 c 4 2 mknod /dev/tty3 c 4 3 mknod /dev/tty4 c 4 4 mknod /dev/tty5 c 4 5 mknod /dev/tty6 c 4 6 mknod /dev/tty7 c 4 7 mknod /dev/tty8 c 4 8 mknod /dev/tty9 c 4 9 mknod /dev/tty10 c 4 10 mknod /dev/tty11 c 4 11 mknod /dev/tty12 c 4 12 mknod /dev/ttyS0 c 4 64 mknod /dev/ttyS1 c 4 65 mknod /dev/ttyS2 c 4 66 mknod /dev/ttyS3 c 4 67 echo Setting up hotplug. hotplug echo Creating block device nodes. mkblkdevs echo "Loading advansys.ko module" insmod /lib/advansys.ko mkblkdevs resume /dev/hdc1 echo Creating root device. mkrootdev -t ext3 -o defaults,ro /dev/hdc2 echo Mounting root filesystem. # mount /sysroot mount -o defaults --ro -t ext3 /dev/hdc2 /sysroot echo Setting up other filesystems. setuproot echo Switching to new root and running init. switchroot I'm suspecting that this is caused by a bug in mkinitrd because I first noticed this when building a custom kernel and when I booted into the new kernel I got the kernel panic. I have to do the above procedure every time I build a new kernel and even the kernel RPMs from the Fedora Core 5 Updates repository will do the same thing. If there's something that I'm doing wrong I'm still trying to figure out what it is if mkinitrd is not the issue. Thanks!, Brian
