Fedora 11 hanging after ext4 upgrade from ext3 recreating initrd for 2.6.29.6-217.2.7

masterDL · 08-23-2009, 04:12 PM

after upgrading my fs to ext4 the screen stays black and wont boot. from what i understand i need to recreate the initial ramdisk for my kernel version so that it would take the root filesystem type from my fstab file. and load the proper ext module into the ramdisk

when i tried to mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd/2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64.img 2.6.29.6-217.2.7 --fstab=/media/fc11/etc/fstab

i get "No modules available for kernel "2.6.29.6-217.2.7"."

so my question is how do i get it to load the modules so that it will allow me to boot into fc11 under ext4

Drakeo · 08-24-2009, 09:43 AM

look at this

Quote:

http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.ph...xt4_filesystem

I hope it helps you.

kbp · 08-24-2009, 09:51 AM

Hi MasterDL,

Here's a link you may find helpful:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ext4_in_Fedora_11

Quote:

If you want to convert a partition to Ext4 post-installation, you can use the following manual process. Do backup your data for safety.

1. umount /dev/sdb2 (where sdb2 is the ext3 partition you are about to convert to ext4)
2. tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/sdb2 (converting into Ext4)
3. fsck -pf /dev/sdb2 (filesystem check for additional safety)
4. mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb2 /media (to verify conversion)

I hope you didnt upgrade /boot as well .. it's not supported yet

cheers,

kbp

masterDL · 08-24-2009, 09:16 PM

ya i did't upgrade the boot partition

i still have a problem with the computer not booting although the whole proccess on both sites you guys listed are identical to the way i did it.

i also added in the fstab the "type" as being ext4 not ext4dev is that a problem?

i am able to mount it under fedora 11 live

kbp · 08-24-2009, 10:19 PM

No, no problem, I run Fed 11 and the type is set to 'ext4', sorry I'm out of other ideas

cheers

Drakeo · 08-25-2009, 06:26 AM

if you can please post your /boot/grub/menu.1st and also the /etc/fstab file.

Quote:

Do you actually get to the grub menu at boot?

if you get the grub menu then it just goes blank then it never loaded the kernel. try to down load and burn the disk super grub and see if you can boot from it. if so it will have to do with your grub stage files in your /boot/grub
if you just get a blank screen and know grub menu then grub is not installed. or grub does not read your fs to load the /boot/grub/menu.1st

Quote:

if you added a drive or rearrange them please make sure bios is booting from selected drive.

if all is right.
bios looks for DOS (grub)
grub looks for the kernel
kernel syncs with the fstab to find root.

masterDL · 08-25-2009, 07:37 PM

well i would have said that grub does't boot but because i guess you think that may help the here ya go:

grub.conf

Code:

#boot=/dev/sda0
default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64.img
title Fedora (2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64.img
title Fedora (2.6.29.6-213.fc11.x86_64)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-213.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c rhgb quiet
title XP
	rootnoverify (hd0,1)
	makeactive
	chainloader +1
	root (hd0,0)
	makeactive

fstab

Code:

#: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

tmpfs	/dev/shm	tmpfs	defaults	0	0
devpts	/dev/pts	devpts	defaults	0	0
sysfs	/sys	sysfs	defaults		0	0
proc	/proc	proc	defaults		0	0
#Entry for /dev/sda4 :
UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c	/	ext4	defaults	1	1
#Entry for /dev/dm-0 :
#Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=cc12ffe1-9bca-a40e-5a9a-f4cb156f5a21	/boot	ext3	defaults	1	2
#Entry for /dev/sda2 :
UUID=D95E1B6B79D532C5		/XP	ntfs-3g	defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8	0	0
#Entry for /dev/sda3 :
UUID=c7e5a2ae-0666-4dc1-ac0b-93fb28f11e45	/swap	swap	defaults 	1	2
/dev/Test/Raid					/DL	ext3	defaults	1 	2

Drakeo · 08-26-2009, 07:47 AM

your grub is told to look for root on /dev/sda1 but your fstab says root is on /dev/sda4.

Quote:

title Fedora (2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64)
root (hd0,0) <-- grub tries to boot your /dev/sda1 ext3
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64.img

this is your ext4 for grub to boot.

Quote:

#Entry for /dev/sda4 :
UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c / ext4 defaults 1 1

change your menu.1st which is located let me guess /dev/sda4/boot/grub/menu.1st
so to boot your /dev/sda4 your menu.1st should read.

Quote:

title Fedora (2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64)
root (hd0,3) <------ note this this tells grub to look for your kernel on sda4.
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64.img

so now this tells grub to go to /dev/sda4 open folder /boot/ and load your kernel and initrd.img it is up to your new kernel to load and sync with your /etc/fstab to find root.
so the fstab tells the init to use the root tree on /dev/sda4 root=UUID=743164d7-4c76-16d1-70c2-c944365d5d5c

Now that knew kernel in fc11 is supposed to be able to read ext4 file system.
I have had no problems with slackware ext4 with lilo or grub.

Quote:

#Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=cc12ffe1-9bca-a40e-5a9a-f4cb156f5a21 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2

this tells me you have a partition /sda1 mounted as /boot/ when you boot your ext4 fc11
not sure why you did that not a good Idea it will wipe your boot folder and load a partition there. so create a directory in /dev/sda4/mnt/ and name it sda1 and in your /dev/sda4/etc/fstab file change the entry to.

Quote:

#Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=cc12ffe1-9bca-a40e-5a9a-f4cb156f5a21 /mnt/sda1 <--- ext3 defaults 1 2

now things should boot a little better. If not send the error read out.

masterDL · 08-26-2009, 09:26 PM

/boot is not a folder its a partition.
so in grub it looks for the kernel at hd0,0 aka sda0 after grub finds initrd it looks for the kernel which according to the fstab is at sda4.

now if you think this is the problem which i highly doubt mostly due to the fact that i know that i need to rebuild initrd to follow the new fstab file which is what i saw written in no more than 5 places on the web. but i see that most people trying to help me are not even using fedora. so how do you expect to me to see the same results as you have seen in another distribution?