I had the Redhat 8.0 running on my system to begin with.
Then, I upgraded my system to a new mother board, new video card, etc. but I wanted to keep some of my hard disks.
I have one hard disk dedicated to Linux and another to Windows.
Unknowingly, I had the LILO on the Windows disk so I reinstalled it on my Linux disk so I could upgrade Windows also.
I did it by installing Redhat 8.0 on top of my Linux disk (already Redhat 8.0) but without reformatting and reparitioning it so I could preserve the existing files.

Now, I can start Linux but I get an error when kernel initializes.
I will only show last few lines of the screen (everything above it looked OK):

....
Mounting /proc filesystem
Creating block devices
Creating root device
Creating root filesystem
Mount: error 6 mounting ext2
pivotroot: pivot_root (/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
Freeing unused kernel memory: 212k freed
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.


After that, the system is stopped (keyboard LEDs blink).
My guess is that for some reason the mount did not work and everything else is a result of this.
I do not understand what is the problem and I would appreciate any help.
I can run the Linux Rescue option and I can access the hard disk and the /sbin/init exists where it suppose to.

Thank you,
Martin

By default redhat 8 uses ext3 not ext2? Did you specifically use ext2 during the install?

I believe that the only time the installer gave me a choice of ext3 vs. ext2 was during reparitioning option, but because I did not want to reparition, I selected no partitioning and no formatting and continued the installation. I know that my system is ext2.
I had Redhat 7.1 before, then 8.0 which worked before the hardware upgrade and all I am trying to do is to make it work in the new hardware environment without any file loss.
Is it possible that the kernel assumes ext3 even though it is ext2?
Martin

I think it is trying to mount ext2. What does your /etc/inittab file say?

You may need a parameter in your lilo.conf similar to:
initrd = /boot/vmlinuz

/etc/inittab looks OK to me, very similar to one in my linux book.
I can check the lilo.conf but I believe it is correct because the kernel initializes correctly and checks hardware and tries to start init. Also, it was generated by Redhat installer.

But I have some more information:
When I use the boot disk created by the Redhat installer, the kernel starts up from the floppy and then it jumps to the init on the hard disk and continues correctly and I am able to log in.
Looks like the problem occurs when kernel tries to give up control to init and in case of hard disk boot, it does not work and I do not know why.
All of the kernel messages look about the same between floppy and hard disk boot until it tries to mount devices and start init.
There must be some kind of setting somewhere that is not correct. Any ideas?
Martin

I found the problem but I still do not understand why it happened.
I looked at the floppy configuration file and noticed that it appended:
root=/dev/hda1
to the Linux kernel parameters.
Then, I tried to start Linux from the hard disk by entering
linux root=/dev/hda1
at the Linux boot prompt and it worked.
Then, I looked at lilo.conf and noticed that it contained:
root="LABEL=/"
which did not make sense to me.
I also found "LABEL=/" in my fstab file where I would expect "/dev/hda1" to be.
I replaced the references to "LABEL=/" with "/dev/hda1" in lilo.conf and fstab and now it works correctly.

I believe that something during Redhat installation caused this to happen because I did not do it myself.
Possible installation script bug or oversight?
If anybody knows the reason for this, speak up, otherwise I will not bother with this anymore.
Martin

The LABEL values are the names of the partitions (specified when you create the partition). Since I dual boot my linux boxes with multiple linux distros I tend not to use them since almost all will want to access a partition with lables of "/" and "/var". Perhaps when you reinstalled, the partition names were deleted or something.

When I upgraded my hardware, I moved my hard disks around and my Linux drive which was hdc1 became hda1. I also added a lot of new hardware and that is why I decided to resinstall Redhat 8 onto the disk.
When I ran the install program, I did not go through paritioning and formatting but I reinstalled LILO to fix the hard disk locations.
The install program asked me about the root location and I specified /dev/hda1. The parition names (whatever this means) I did not see nor changed.
Somehow the install program got really confused by all of this.
Martin

All's well that ends well

Trust me - LABEL values cause me nothing but trouble.

Now I know.
This is the first time I have ever seen them used and I agree with you.
Martin