Kt7-raid + Redhat 7.3 Problem
 

Hi,

I am trying to set-up a server.
Thus far it went well, up to the point where i remebered that the machine i am setting up RH 7.3 has the HPT370 controller on-board as well..

So i decided to switch the HD from the regular IDE channel and plug it into the HPT370's connector (for faster speed, and mirroring)

That's where the problems start...

As the machine boots it hangs with the following message:

"Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to Kernel"

Well, obviously this is caused by the change in IDE channels, because when i plug it back into the regular IDE connector, it boots just fine.

I believe it is caused by wrong GRUB configuration, as it is still pointing to the old IDE designations for booting purposes...

Well, i tried using "sda" designations to specify that it is now booting from the pseudo-scsi HPT controller, but doesn't seem to work..

Actually it doesn't even seem to save my GRUB settings as i change them.. it seems to boot "normally" as if i didn't do any changes...

Has anyone any ideas on how to fix this?

I will be grateful for any assistance you can provide.

Thank You,

In GRUB you are going to have to change the init=whatever line to boot to the drive's new location. If its the first channel on the HPT, in lilo or linux-speak that would be /dev/hde1 (if you are using the first partition on the drive. Oh wait, I've got a grub machine around here somewhere:

title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)
root (hd0,1) [<---I'm guessing change this to (hd4,1)]
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda2 [<---change that to /dev/hde1] hdc=ide-scsi

Actually, I would just create a whole NEW entry entirely so no matter what it'll be happy.

Now here's the other problem, you're going to have to change the entries in /etc/fstab as well. Keep a rescue CD handy.

Cheers,

Finegan

Thank You for your response, i actually got it to work from what you wrote, well... sort of..

To give you more information her is my current GRUB config:

root(hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda6 hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-3.img

From what you suggested, i changed the root(hd0,0) to (hd4,0) and it wouldn't work.. so i left it alone is it was

Furthermore i changed the root=/dev/hda6 to root=/dev/hde6 which DID WORK

It booted more or less fine, with only one error, when it tried to assign hda3 as a swap partition.. could you tell me how to change the setting of the swap partition from hda3 to hde3?

Also, i think i know why the root(hd0,0) didn't want to work when changed to root(hd4,0) ... i believe it is because this hard drive is still the first one in there.. aside of it, there are no other hd's in the system... well at least for now.. i want to eventually make the mirroring work for data backup, but i will get to that AFTER current problems are solved...

Also, you suggested adding a NEW entry to GRUB.. how do i do that? when i am in the GRUB v.0.91 menu (kind of graphical text menu) it only allows me to EDIT the current choice: Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3), but there is no way to add an additional choice.. i suppose there is a way since you suggested it.. please tell me how.. online GRUB documentation doesn't seem to help much..

Also, even after it finally booted (with the swap error) the configuration was:

root(hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hde6 hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-3.img

but the next time i rebooted, this config was gone, and it went back to the original configuration, meaning it still doesn't save my changes...

Can you please elaborate on how to go about adding an extra choice to the grub configuration, and how to make it save my changes, as well how to change the swap configuration?

Thank You very much!!

Okay, I think what's up with grub is that the first root setting is telling it where the MBR is. Newer mobos keep looking to each drive for a boot loader of some sort, older ones have to have something on /dev/hda or they go kazoo. Regardless, the file you need to change so that everything mounts properly is /etc/fstab, and change all the 'a's to 'e's.

bob@tyler:~$ more /etc/fstab
/dev/hde2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hde3 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hde1 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0

Like that, I've got the same controller, same mobo, switched everything over a few months ago one day when I was bored.

Cheers,

Finegan

Ok, i've found out on the web how to edit the GRUB config file, so i've added the new configration to it, works !!!

I've edited the /etc/fstab file to change the SWAP setting. I noticed one thing... the ONLY place with a defined place IS the SWAP.. all the others are just there, not really defined.. so i changed hda3 to hde3

(one thing that i didn't like is that when i deleted the "a" character and input "e" the whole line seemed to shift a bit and the last 0 in the configuration went down a line.. don't know if that matters much, but kind of threw me off.. since i shouldn't happen when replacing one character with another...)

So i rebooted.. and now i get a new error messages during boot-up.. it says that it can not find the mount point for the local file system, and then later it says something similar about not being able to load other file systems...

it still boots to the login...

it seems for every step forward i gotta take 2 steps back.. but hey.. i'm learning.. thanks for your help, hopefully you've experienced all this before and have easy solutions :)

Thanks!!


+++++++++


Update:

I fiddled around with the spaces in the fstab file, finally managing to make it look the same as it originally did..

Now everything boots PERFECTLY!!!

Thanks a lot Finegan!!!

I plan to GHOST the hard drive to a larger drive...
Do you anticipate any problems? Should i watch out for anything?

Then i plan to enable the HPT370 mirroring.. does that work seamlessly? or is there any issues I should be aware of?

Thanks again!!

I had some problems with the ext3 and old versions of GHOST (dont know about newer).

You can create a partition with fsck, ... clone the partition with a simple "dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hde1" and then resizing the FS to the full space asigned to hde1 with "resize2fs /dev/hde1"

Don't know whats about the kernel driver but the highpoint driver does not support raid 0.

If you want to know that look for the GPL driver from the kernel.

Thanks, will take that under advisment..

but for the moment i got bigger problems with the machine..

Ironically, while trying to set up a "test" diskette with GRUB on it, i inadvertently fucked up GRUB on the hard drive..

It gets stuck in STAGE 2.. just doesn't load anything..

any ideas on how to restore my previous GRUB config?

Thanks,

1) Boot with your rescue disc

2) Mount your "/" partition

3) Chroot into it

4) Run grub