Boot issue with newly compiled kernel 2.6.15.7

whirler · 07-07-2009, 11:16 AM

I checked through the forums and couldn't find any posts with my issue in it so if anyone knows of a post where my problem was solved please point me in the right direction. So, about my problem.

I installed Ubuntu 6.06 because I needed a version of Linux that ran a slightly older kernel (it came with 2.6.15 I belive). I'm installing some software that requires me to have the full source tree of my running kernel available so I decided to compile a new kernel.

I selected 2.6.15.7 because I know for sure that the software I want to compile will compile under that kernel (someone I know has already gotten it working on another machine). I successfully went through the following steps to compile the kernel:

1. download source to /home directory
2. unpacked tarball and then ran make mrproper
3. ran make menuconfig and made sure the config looked good
4. after saving the config from menuconfig I ran make and then make install
5. ran mkinitramfs -o initrd.img-2.6.15.7
6. updated my grub config (menu.lst)
7. tried booting the maching which didn't work becaues I forgot to build modules
8. booted to stock kernel and ran make modules and make modules_install
9. tried booting into new kernel again but this time got different errors which is where I'm stuck now

The errors are:

Code:

WARNING: Couldn't open directory /lib/modules/2.6.15.7: No such file or directory.

and

Code:

FATAL: Could not open /lib/modules/2.6.15.7/modules.dep.temp for writing: no such file or directory

These two errors remain on the screen for a while and then I eventually get this:

Code:

ALERT! /dev/hda1 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

Does anyone know what I may have done wrong that is preventing my compiled kernel from seeing /dev/hda1? I suspect that's why it can't find the /lib/modules/2.6.15.7 directory. I'm fairly certain that /dev/hda1 is the correct device to reference in my grub configuration because that is what the kernel that works on my system is referencing in grub.

At the present I have relocated my kernel source to /usr/src/linux and corrected the "build" and "source" symlinks in /lib/modules/2.6.15.7 to point to /usr/src/linux. I also changed the "initrd.img" and "vmlinuz" symlinks in / to point to the initrd.img and vmlinuz for my compiled kernel in the /boot directory.

Uncle_Theodore · 07-07-2009, 11:29 AM

Looks like you forgot to either enable your HD controller support in your kernel configuration.

whirler · 07-07-2009, 11:38 AM

I'll check through my configuration and see what I set for the HD controller. Also, I was looking at something else in my configuration and noticed that I had Ext3 support set to compile as a module instead of being built-in.

The help section said that if your / partition uses ext3 (mine does) it is risky compiling the kernel with ext3 support as a module. Could that have been where I messed up?

Uncle_Theodore · 07-07-2009, 11:57 AM

It could, but I thought you said you created an initrd that, in theory, should include the module for your filesystem. What is in there?

whirler · 07-07-2009, 12:31 PM

I did create an initrd image. Are you wondering what's in it? Here is the contents of my initrd.img-2.6.15.7:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

mkdir /sys
mkdir /proc
mkdir /tmp
mkdir -p /var/lock
mount -t sysfs none /sys
mount -t proc none /proc

# Note that this only becomes /dev on the real filesystem if udev's scripts
# are used; which they will be, but it's worth pointing out
mount -t tmpfs -o mode=0755 udev /dev
touch /dev/.initramfs-tools
mkdir /dev/.initramfs
mknod /dev/console c 5 1 
mknod /dev/null c 1 3

# Export the dpkg architecture
export DPKG_ARCH=
. /conf/arch.conf

# Bring in the main config
. /conf/initramfs.conf
for i in conf/conf.d/*; do
	[ -f ${i} ] && . ${i}
done
. /scripts/functions

# Parse command line options
export break=
export init=/sbin/init
export quiet=n
export readonly=y
export ROOT=
export resume=${RESUME}
export rootmnt=/root
export debug=
for x in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
	case $x in
	init=*)
		init=${x#init=}
		;;
	root=*)
		ROOT=${x#root=}
		case $ROOT in
		LABEL=*)
			ROOT="/dev/disk/by-label/${ROOT#LABEL=}"
			;;
		UUID=*)
			ROOT="/dev/disk/by-uuid/${ROOT#UUID=}"
			;;
		esac
		;;
	nfsroot=*)
		NFSROOT=${x#nfsroot=}
		;;
	boot=*)
		BOOT=${x#boot=}
		;;
	resume=*)
		resume=${x#resume=}
		;;
	quiet)
		quiet=y
		;;
	ro)
		readonly=y
		;;
	rw)
		readonly=n
		;;
	debug)
		debug=y
		exec >/tmp/initramfs.debug 2>&1
		set -x
		;;
	break=*)
		break=${x#break=}
		;;
	break)
		break=premount
		;;
	esac
done

depmod -a
maybe_break top

# Don't do log messages here to avoid confusing usplash
run_scripts /scripts/init-top

. /scripts/${BOOT}
parse_numeric ${ROOT}

maybe_break modules
log_begin_msg "Loading essential drivers..."
load_modules
log_end_msg

maybe_break premount
[ "$quiet" != "y" ] && log_begin_msg "Running /scripts/init-premount"
run_scripts /scripts/init-premount
[ "$quiet" != "y" ] && log_end_msg

maybe_break mount
log_begin_msg "Mounting root file system..."
mountroot
log_end_msg

maybe_break bottom
[ "$quiet" != "y" ] && log_begin_msg "Running /scripts/init-bottom"
run_scripts /scripts/init-bottom
[ "$quiet" != "y" ] && log_end_msg

# Move virtual filesystems over to the real filesystem
mount -n -o move /sys ${rootmnt}/sys
mount -n -o move /proc ${rootmnt}/proc

while [ ! -x ${rootmnt}${init} ]; do
	panic "Target filesystem doesn't have ${init}"
done

maybe_break init

# Unset the problematic debug variable and chain to real filesystem
unset debug
exec run-init ${rootmnt} ${init} "$@" <${rootmnt}/dev/console >${rootmnt}/dev/console

Uncle_Theodore · 07-07-2009, 02:07 PM

I don't quite get it... /boot/initrd.gz is a binary file. The corresponding tree in my case, for example, looks like this

Code:

ls /boot/initrd-tree/
bin  init   lib         mnt   rootdev  sys
dev  initrd-name  load_kernel_modules  proc   rootfs   wait-for-root
etc  keymap   luksdev        resumedev  sbin

and

Code:

cat /boot/initrd-tree/load_kernel_modules 
# This is a script used to load the kernel modules.
# To use it, chmod it 755, and then add the insmod
# lines needed to load your modules, like this:

insmod -v /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/fs/reiserfs/reiserfs.ko

loads the reiserfs module that I need for my root partition.

whirler · 07-07-2009, 04:14 PM

My initrd image is a binary file as well. I had to make a copy of it in a different directory and run it through some commands (cpio was one of them...I forget the rest). The result was a plain text script like the one I included in my post.

Where do I go to see the corresponding tree like you showed? I don't have an initrd-tree directory under /boot. Maybe we're using different distros? I have Ubuntu installed.

Also, I removed and then recompiled the kernel this time including support for ext3 as a built-in feature instead of a module and I still got the same errors when I tried to boot into that kernel.