Hi,

Although I am an experienced linux and unix administrator this is my fist experience of Slackware and I am not very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of booting.

I am trying to install Slackware on a new system that has a (temporary) DVD drive and a 32GB solid state disk as the the only hard disk.

After various problems (which I won't go into detail now to keep things short) I managed to use cfdisk to create a ext2 single bootable partition on the solid state disk that is recognised as /dev/sda1. I also had to create a initrd before I could avoid a kernel panic (VFS: unalbe to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)).

The system now boots until it has trouble mounting root. After

Freeing unused kernel memory: 328k freed

I get:

No kernel modules found for Linux 2.6.27.7-smp
mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt failed: No such device
ERROR no /sbin/init found on rootdev (or not mounted). Trouble ahead.

It then drops me into a shell.
Trying a manual mount:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
gives error - failed: invalid argument

ls -d /dev/sd*
finds
/dev/sda and /dev/sda1

Using cat or strings on /dev/sda1 displays data (but cannot interupt and have to power off).

=> so /dev/sda1 exists and can be accessed

If I try mounting /dev/sda1 on /m when booted into the cd install system (/mnt is already in use) with 'mount /dev/sda1 /m' I can see all the system directories OK.

Any ideas?

Many thanks
David

Did you set your root partition as bootable? Set swap partition as type 82?

Hi,

Where did you get your 'Linux 2.6.27.7-smp' kernel? How was it installed? From the initial installation? Look to see if the '/lib/modules/2.6.27.7-smp/' modules are there.

Post the mkinitrd line that you used to create the initrd.

You really don't need to have the boot flag active to boot your GNU/Linux as long as you have a proper bootloader.

I suspect that your install is not complete since you are getting the module not found issue(s). What type of install did you perform?

Hitest:
I did set the root partion to bootable. There is only the root partition - I haven't created a swap partition (since I am using a solid state disc I have decided not to create swap; at least for the moment).

Onebuck:
Where did you get your 'Linux 2.6.27.7-smp' kernel?

The two installation cds have been created from isos on the Linux Format Magazine (June 2009) which is normally reliable. The kernel is as supplied there.

There are modules in '/lib/modules/2.6.27.7-smp/' - there are 18 entries in the directory.

Post the mkinitrd line that you used to create the initrd.
After booting the installation disc, I mounted /dev/sda1 and chroot(ed) to there. In /boot I ran:

mkinitrd -c -k vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.27.7-smp -f ext2 -r /dev/sda1

What type of install did you perform?
I selected no kernel source and only xface for window manager and didn't do a detailed package selection.

Thanks to you both for your interest.

It depends what you're doing with your slackware installation, that is, how much memory you will use in x windows. If you do any memory intensive activities like compiling a kernel you may need a swap partition.
Maybe the requirements are different for a solid state drive? Perhaps try to use a small swap partition.
Is there a reason you don't want to have a swap partition? If it was me I would at least install a small swap partition (say 256 MB).

Hitest:

Thanks for your comment about swap.

I plan to use the system as an apache web server and probably headless, so I won't be using a X Windows server on it, nor doing any graphical or other intensive video etc work on it.

Solid state drives memory cells have a limited number of times they can be written to - so anything I can do to limit writes to the drive will extend it's life. There is 2GB of memory in the system, so I am hoping not having a swap partition will not be a problem.

Hi,
Excuse me!

Where do you get the information that a 'SSD' has a limited number of writes? Sure multiple writes to a single cell may degrade but the number of writes are/can be controlled;

The above is just one reference but you get the point.
A typical of 20GB writes/day then the drive will enable the enhanced endurance management to adjust the performance. You can see that this is not that big of a number for writes but your server would have to be a mighty big service to achieve the enable. To have a minimum life of 5 years for normal operation is not to bad for a server hdd. Usually you have already upgraded the server with new hardware before that for a major service server.

As for the need for a 'swap'. You have ample memory but if there is a stall then a small swap would prevent this. Therefore the small amount for the swap will insure your operations. 1 MB for swap on a 30GB hard disk is nothing to sweat.

I agree with onebuck. I don't think a small swap partition will negatively impact your apache server. Also, then you will know that it is another issue if your unit fails to boot-up properly after the swap partition is activated. That is, you're eliminating another possibility as you trouble-shoot the installation.
In my opinion I think it is a good idea to create a swap partition. Good luck!

Useful points hitest and onebuck.

SSDs

The SSD I am using is a low cost unit - the OCZ Solid Series SATA II 2.5" SSD. There are two basic sorts odf SSDs using flash type memory. One type is more prone to write failure than the other. There are also SSDs (like the one you mention) that manage writes to distribute them across the whole of the media to ensure small areas are not heavily written to.

As I say, this is cheap drive and the OCZ product page http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...ata_ii_2_5-ssd
does really say what the technology is and may not have 'area write management'. Though (for PC users) is does recommend not defragmenting the drive as that 'may shorten it's life' - hence my (possibly misplaced) concern.

Swap partition
I will try with a swap partition. However that means I will need to shrink the current partition. I have not done this before - any suggestions what tool to use for this?

Failing shrinking it, I will have to repartition the disc from scratch and reinstall. If that works all to the good, though won't then know what went wrong this time.

Any further ideas on the booting failure? Or would just trying to install again be the best option?

David

Hi,

The SSD you are selecting is using the same technology.

To shrink your partition you can use parted from the 'Parted Magic' LiveCD.

I would suggest that you get 'SystemRescueCD' which has parted.

These links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

I've had good luck with shrinking ext3 partitions using gparted.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Tried reducing size of root partition and setting up swap partition with systemRescueCD - worked fine except it completely wrecked booting (maybe as it moved the start of the root partion forward and created the swap as the first partition?).

However on re-installing from scratch system now boots fine with the swap partition present (I haven't tried leaving out the swap partition to attempt reproducing the original problem).

I guess this thread can now be considered closed.

Many thanks for your help.

You're welcome. Glad you got your system working!