Mandrake 10.1 - kernel weirdness
 

Greetings:

I just upgraded my office machine to Mandrake 10.1 from 9.2.

After the upgrade, the stock 2.6.8 kernel would not load the ext3 module, so most of my partitions did not get mounted.

I tried recompiling the kernel with the ext3 module compiled in...this worked, but the new kernel continued to look for its modules in /lib/modules/2.6.8.1-12mdk instead of /lib/modules/2.6.8.1-12mdkcustom, which is where the modules are actually installed after the kernel is compiled - so therefore, no modules get loaded.

I had the same results with the updated stock kernel (2.6.8.1-24mdk); custom-compile: same results.

What's up??????

Thanks in advance for any help. In the meantime, I'm able to boot with the old 2.4.22-10mdk kernel from 9.2, but I'd like to use the 2.6 kernel.

Bob

Eh, the "stock" kernel supports ext3 just fine.

However there was a dramatic change to ext3 which may prohibit it from seeing older ext3 partitions.

When I upgraded a system to 10.1 I noticed that it was unable to mount a particular ext3 partition I had on a drive.

I ended up having to reformat/partition that drive to get ext3 to work.

You may be running into something similiar.

Actually, this isn't the case. If I do boot into the stock kernel, log in as root (since my / and /usr partitions are ext2, I can do this), then

modprobe ext3
mount -a

all the partitions are mounted and read/writable; however, none of my system services are running and have to be started manually.
Also, as I said, if I hard-compile the module into the kernel, it mounts everything - but then looks in the wrong /lib/modules subdir for the other modules.

The message I get with the stock kernel is something like this:

mount: fs type ext3 not supported by kernel


Thanks...Bob

I rebuilt the initrd for the stock kernel using the "--with=ext3"
parameter. It now boots up and mounts the partitions. There are still
some problems which aren't related to this (I'm getting errors when the
network scripts get executed):



Mar 16 17:47:14 officebox ifup: arping: socket: Address family not
supported by protocol Mar 16 17:47:14 officebox ifup: Error, some other
host already uses address 127.0.0.1.
Mar 16 17:47:14 officebox network: Bringing up loopback interface:
failed
Mar 16 17:47:14 officebox ifup: arping: socket: Address family not
supported by protocol
Mar 16 17:47:14 officebox ifup: Error, some other host already uses
address 10.218.96.90.
Mar 16 17:47:14 officebox network: Bringing up interface eth0: failed
Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox ifup: arping: socket: Address family not
supported by protocol Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox ifup: Error, some other
host already uses address 192.168.56.2. Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox
network: Bringing up interface eth1: failed
Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox firewall.iptables: Starting Firewall services
Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox firewall.iptables: firewall: Configuring
Firewall Rules using iptables Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox
firewall.iptables: iptables v1.2.9:
Mar 16 17:47:15 officebox firewall.iptables: can't initialize iptables
table `filter': iptables who? (do you need to insmod?)



Most of the modules do get loaded; not all. NFS doesn't work, either,
since the network interfaces aren't up.

I'm getting there, but this is a PITA...shouldn't have to rebuild this
stuff myself to get things working.

Since this WORKS for you, all you have to do is add

ext3

to the /etc/modprobe.preload file then issue a mkinitrd...

A VERY easy way to do the latter is to go into the MCC and choose a different booth theme, then choose whichever one you actually want and hit OK.

Remember to only do this AFTER you add the above line to modprobe.preload and modprobe.conf

That will fix what you are seeing.

Rebuilding the kernel is almost NEVER required in Mandrake, and even then only for the more esoteric drivers not provided with a stock kernel.

By rebuilding the kernel as you have you are probably inadvertently "breaking things" as well.

Thanks...that's a feature of Mandrake that I've never messed with (boot themes). I'll look it over.