[NCLUG] Fedora 8 install

bsimpson at att.net bsimpson at att.net
Thu Feb 28 12:15:38 MST 2008


Kevin,

> > > Odd. Thats the part where it's checking to see if it should resume
> > > from hibernate (which stores the image on your swap partition.).
> > 
> > I was guessing that was the reason for the "resume" statement.
> > Thanks for confirming that.
> > 
> > > I don't know why it would hang there...
> > 
> > My Fedora Core 4 installation uses the same partition for it's swap.
> > As long as FC4  was cleanly shutdown, is it safe to assume that
> > sharing would be no problem?  I've shared swaps before between
> > different Linux installations, but this is perhaps the first time an
> > installation was looking to see if it should resume.
> 
> I wouldn't think it would cause any problems, but to be sure you could
> boot from the f8 rescue disk and run a 'mkswap' on it to make sure it's
> the right format.

I tried it.  Still hangs.

> > What about putting back together an initrd file once it's been
> > extracted? Is:  find . -depth | cpio -ov | gzip > newinitrd
> > a good command to use, issued from the directory that the original
> > initrd was extracted into?
> 
> I think that should work, but really you shouldn't ever have to mess
> with the initrd.

Except, perhaps, to diagnose why the boot hangs.  It doesn't appear to
crash, just hang.  It responds to Ctrl-Alt-Del (don't remember the message
it displays before rebooting).

> > Also the extracted initrd has a dev directory containing numerous
> > device files.  I don't have much knowledge of device files, but could
> > they be specific to not only the hardware but also to the OS version,
> > and could extracting and recreating a Fedora 8 initrd file using
> > Fedora Core 4 cause problems?  In that case I should boot the F8 DVD
> > in recovery mode and do the work there.  Or is the Fedora version a
> > non-issue?
> 
> Again, I wouldn't think it would be a problem, but you could run a
> 'mkinitrd' from the rescue cd to make sure.

I couldn't get mkinitrd to work, even when booted from the F8 DVD, but
didn't try to diagnose because I discovered that I could edit the init
file by just gunzip'ing the original initrd to a cpio archive but not
extracting to separate files.  I use emacs in hexl-mode to edit the
init portion of the archive, then re-gzip and this new initrd works.
I commented out the resume command, but then the boot process hangs
on the next command in the init file:
  mkrootdev -t ext3 -o defaults,ro LABEL=/1

The common thing here is the boot hangs when the hard drive is
accessed.  (The boot loader (in this case lilo) has no problem
accessing the hard drive.  The kernel and initrd are placed into
memory just fine, and the kernel executes commands in the initrd's
init file.)  So why is the kernel having trouble accessing my hard
drive?

I've placed the contents of initrd's init file below.  I find it
curious that module scsi_wait_scan is loaded and then unloaded on
the very next line.

Brian S


- - - init - - -

#!/bin/nash

mount -t proc /proc /proc
setquiet
echo Mounting proc filesystem
echo Mounting sysfs filesystem
mount -t sysfs /sys /sys
echo Creating /dev
mount -o mode=0755 -t tmpfs /dev /dev
mkdir /dev/pts
mount -t devpts -o gid=5,mode=620 /dev/pts /dev/pts
mkdir /dev/shm
mkdir /dev/mapper
echo Creating initial device nodes
mknod /dev/null c 1 3
mknod /dev/zero c 1 5
mknod /dev/systty c 4 0
mknod /dev/tty c 5 0
mknod /dev/console c 5 1
mknod /dev/ptmx c 5 2
mknod /dev/rtc c 10 135
mknod /dev/tty0 c 4 0
mknod /dev/tty1 c 4 1
mknod /dev/tty2 c 4 2
mknod /dev/tty3 c 4 3
mknod /dev/tty4 c 4 4
mknod /dev/tty5 c 4 5
mknod /dev/tty6 c 4 6
mknod /dev/tty7 c 4 7
mknod /dev/tty8 c 4 8
mknod /dev/tty9 c 4 9
mknod /dev/tty10 c 4 10
mknod /dev/tty11 c 4 11
mknod /dev/tty12 c 4 12
mknod /dev/ttyS0 c 4 64
mknod /dev/ttyS1 c 4 65
mknod /dev/ttyS2 c 4 66
mknod /dev/ttyS3 c 4 67
echo Setting up hotplug.
hotplug
echo Creating block device nodes.
mkblkdevs
echo "Loading ehci-hcd.ko module"
insmod /lib/ehci-hcd.ko 
echo "Loading ohci-hcd.ko module"
insmod /lib/ohci-hcd.ko 
echo "Loading uhci-hcd.ko module"
insmod /lib/uhci-hcd.ko 
mount -t usbfs /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
echo "Loading mbcache.ko module"
insmod /lib/mbcache.ko 
echo "Loading jbd.ko module"
insmod /lib/jbd.ko 
echo "Loading ext3.ko module"
insmod /lib/ext3.ko 
echo "Loading scsi_mod.ko module"
insmod /lib/scsi_mod.ko 
echo "Loading sd_mod.ko module"
insmod /lib/sd_mod.ko 
echo "Loading libata.ko module"
insmod /lib/libata.ko 
echo "Loading pata_ali.ko module"
insmod /lib/pata_ali.ko 
echo Waiting for driver initialization.
stabilized --hash --interval 250 /proc/scsi/scsi
echo "Loading ata_generic.ko module"
insmod /lib/ata_generic.ko 
insmod /lib/scsi_wait_scan.ko
rmmod scsi_wait_scan
mkblkdevs
resume /dev/sda8
echo Creating root device.
mkrootdev -t ext3 -o defaults,ro LABEL=/1
echo Mounting root filesystem.
mount /sysroot
echo Setting up other filesystems.
setuproot
echo Switching to new root and running init.
switchroot
echo Booting has failed.
sleep -1



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