[SOLVED] Boot time raid error, need advise to recompile kernel

kapz · 09-12-2010, 10:05 PM

Hi,
i am using slackware 13.1(x86_64) huge kernel for my setup and everything is up and running fine. But for a wrapper script that provides fbsplash I was required to generate a initrd-tree, so I followed the example README in /boot and made me an ext4 initrd image, however if I boot with that initrd and generic kernel, slack freezes while booting, it says searching storage devices and just stalls, It also says that I need to specify raid=noautodetect option if raid is not required. I don't have a raid controller neither card nor onboard, my mb-board is intel DH55HC with two sata HDD.

So do I need to recompile my kernel, if so how? On the net all articles are for compiling a NEW kernel taken from kernel.org, I don't want that I wanna recompile the existing kernel source on slackware(don't want to break any apps) and build kernel exclusively for my hardware/requirements.

Thanks.

Richard Cranium · 09-12-2010, 11:29 PM

Run "/usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh" and use the result to create your initrd. I'd also use the generic kernel instead of the huge.s one.

kapz · 09-13-2010, 01:52 AM

hi there, I tried that and made initrd using the suggested parameters but still the problem occurs. While booting it looks like this:

Code:

cpuidle: using governor menu
TCP cubic registered
Initializing XFRM netlink socket
NET: Registered protocol family 17
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
ata2.00: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2.01: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata2.00: ATAPI: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50, TN02, max UDMA/100
ata2.01: ATA-8: ST3250318AS, CC38, max UDMA/133
ata2.01: 488397168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100
ata2.01: configured for UDMA/133
usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=8087, idProduct=0020
usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-1:1.0: 6 ports detected
usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=8087, idProduct=0020
usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
hub 2-1:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-1:1.0: 8 ports detected
usb 1-1.1: new low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
ata1.01: failed to resume link (SControl 0)
usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=046e, idProduct=5542
usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-1.1: Product: USB Multimedia Keyboard
usb 1-1.1: Manufacturer: BTC
usb 1-1.2: new low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
ata1.00: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata1.01: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
ata1.00: ATA-8: ST3250318AS, CC38, max UDMA/133
ata1.00: 488397168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST3250318AS      CC38 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
 sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4
scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50  TN02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=192f, idProduct=0416
usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-1.2: Product: USB Optical Mouse
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
scsi 1:0:1:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST3250318AS      CC38 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
 sdb:
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
 sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
usb 1-1.5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 1-1.5: New USB device found, idVendor=0d49, idProduct=7410
usb 1-1.5: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-1.5: Product: Basics Desktop  
usb 1-1.5: Manufacturer: Maxtor  
usb 1-1.5: SerialNumber: 2HBE6G9C    
scsi2 : usb-storage 1-1.5:1.0
sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
registered taskstats version 1
md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect
md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
List of all partitions:
0b00 1048575 sr0 driver: sr
0810 244198584 sdb driver: sd
Thats it, it won't move forward from this point on.

However in dmesg everything is shown as above except the last 3 lines, in dmesh they look like this:

EXT3-fs (sda3): error: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240)
EXT2-fs (sda3): error: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240)
EXT4-fs (sda3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode
VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) readonly on device 8:3.

nass · 09-13-2010, 06:27 AM

Would the Slackware guide for compiling - installing a kernel work for you or did I get a completely wrong idea about what you want to do?

http://www.slackbook.org/html/book.h...KERNEL-COMPILE

you can use the sources under /usr/src/linux to compile a completely custom kernel from the existing kernel source..

TIP: you can use the /usr/src/linux/.config file (if you have a few ones laying around) to avoid having to go through the configure process manually.

kapz · 09-13-2010, 04:53 PM

Thanks nass, well I followed the guide till the step: make bzImage, and the step is completed successfully. It says:

Quote:

Kernel: arch/x86/boot/bzImage is ready (#1)

however my arch is x86_64 (i7 cpu). What do I need to do to generate a bzImage for x86_64?
Thanks a ton.

nass · 09-13-2010, 04:59 PM

Excellent question actually.. I have no idea myself since i haven't compiled a custom kernel on any of my 64bit slackwares.. (i'm not proud to say)

Anyone has an idea?

kapz · 09-13-2010, 05:14 PM

ok I followed this article - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...?part=1&chap=7

and just ran make && modules_install. After that I did find a bzImage in /usr/src/linux/arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage , but am not sure if it's the one created by me or it's the old one present there since the installation...?

nass · 09-13-2010, 05:28 PM

check its date...

kapz · 09-13-2010, 05:52 PM

Yeah the date is todays, but it says modified on <today's date>..
nonetheless I added the entry in lilo for new kernel and rebooted the system and...oh! bleep.. system is rendered unusable

alright no worries I thought I have my original kernels intact so I tried booting with huge.s but as soon as it finishes loading the modules and starts X, the system/screen goes blank...and I have to hard reset it

I think huge.s is loading all the modules that I wanted to make in new kernel configuration which in turn has updated /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. Is there a way to reinstate my previous working slack?

can I copy over someone's elses rc.modules from fresh install? or it differs from system to system even for huge.s?

nass · 09-13-2010, 06:20 PM

you skipped mentioning an awful lot of steps here.

did you 'make install' the modules of the new custom kernel as well?
did you copy the necessary files to the /boot dir?
did you run lilo after you included the new kernel entry in lilo.conf?

as for huge.s did it use to start X normally before compiling the custom kernel?? it doesn't seem to be related to the new custom kernel...

still if you have no kernel image to boot from try including the kernel parameter '-s' at the lilo screen during boot (just use the up and down arrow keys to stop lilo from executing the default kernel and then type) in order to log on in single user mode and then alter /etc/inittab runlevel to 3 in order to avoid logging into kdm / xdm etc. then restart

then you can attempt to start X as 'startx' and follow any error msg you see on the screen.

kapz · 09-13-2010, 06:41 PM

Well the slack was working perfectly fine including KDE and hence X, it was just that I was using huge.s instead of generic kernel because generic kernel gave the error as mentioned in above posts, however then I decided to create a custom kernel so that it boots w/o raid....

Now I followed the article or which you provided link to exactly as instructed on that site, plus I played with a LOT of parameters in kernel menuconfig, removed some modules and added some..followed till the step bzImage is created and placed under x86. Then from gentoo site I altered the process from 'make modules' as stated in slackbook to 'make && modules_install'( the command completed successfully) stated in gentoo article. Then I copied the bzImage from usr/src/linux/arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage to /boot/my-kernel-2.6.33.4,
after that I added entry in lilo for my-kernel-2.6.33.4 and ran lilo as root, the lilo command too completed successfully.
After that I rebooted and selected my-kernel option and after it said bios check successfull......................................................................................... ..............................................
The screen went blank infinately, so hard rebooted and loaded huge.s from lilo menu, the kernel loaded saw penguin logo, it showed messages, then it said that module fuse could not be added to current configuration and a lot of things showed as failed, but then it attempts to load X and goes blank! again hard reset, then I booted from cd into my current installation through huge.s but it still does the same thing i.e freezes while trying to load X/KDM. I have then moved /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to /etc/rc.d/moduless and tried booting again with huge.s kernel and it keeps doing the above mentioned thinhs and freezes.

Thanks

nass · 09-14-2010, 03:35 AM

is it possible you might have omitted including an important driver for the GPU in the custom Kernel?
could you post your /usr/src/linux/.config and /etc/lilo.conf ?

kapz · 09-16-2010, 07:19 PM

hey there, sorry was busy installing slackware(fresh) on a VM, then from there copied everything in modules and .config from /usr/src and the rc.modules of-course. All working peachy on huge kernel now...still generic kernel fails at raid ststement so - I won't try fbsplash anymore now- .