Topic: RESOLVED - Upgrading to new hardware with SME 8.1

[DanB35]

I currently have SME 8.1 running on a box that's getting a little long in the tooth, so I figured it was time for an upgrade.  My plan was to build a new machine, install the drives from the old machine, and I'd be up and running as I'd done in the past.  Unsurprisingly (I wouldn't be posting here otherwise), it didn't work as expected.

The old system is a Gigabyte GA 8I865GME-775-RH motherboard, 2.8 GHz Pentium D with 1 GB RAM, and two hard drives in a software RAID 1 configuration.  The new machine is a Supermicro MBD-X9SCL-F-O motherboard, Intel i3-3240, 8 GB ECC RAM (required by this motherboard).

My first attempt was to remove both drives from the old server, install them in the new server (keeping drive 1 in the first position and drive 2 in the second position), and boot.  The system didn't boot.  I didn't note all the error messages, but the last was "Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!"

I returned the drives to the old server and it booted and ran without issue.  Figuring there may be a hardware configuration issue that would need to be set during installation, my second attempt was to remove a single drive from the old server and install it in the new server (leaving the old server running with the other drive).  I then booted from the SME 8.1 installation CD and ran an upgrade, which completed very quickly (as expected) and without errors.  If that had worked, my next step would have been to move the other drive over and resync.  But when I tried to boot the new server, I got what what seemed to be the same error messages.  The last one (the kernel panic) was the same, and here's what was leading up to it as best as I can transcribe it:

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Scanning logical volumes
  Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
  No volume groups found
Activating logical volumes
  Volume group "main" not found
Creating root device.
Mounting root filesystem.
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
Setting up other filesystems.
Setting up new root fs
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
Switching to new root and running init.
unmounting old /dev
unmounting old /proc
unmounting old /sys
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Clearly it's not finding something critical, but I don't see that I have access to a shell at this point to figure out what's going on.

To rule out the chance of this being incompatible hardware, I did a clean install of SME 8.1 onto a spare hard drive--it installs, boots, and runs without issue.

I can, if necessary, backup the old server, do a clean install on the new server, and then restore from the backup.  I'd rather not if I can avoid it, though, as I've made some modifications over the years that I don't know that I could readily replicate.

[stephdl]

do your motherboard have the fakeraid activated if yes set to disable?
take a look to the sata settings in the bios (either ahci or ide or raid)

Time to trick bios settings and if it is not workable maybe you need to reinstall like you spoke, but before take note about your custom modifications (the audittools can help you).

Tip : make a worpress somewhere in the web to write note about custom modifcations you do, it is useful for you and for other...It is why i have a website

EDIT : I can see on you MB specification that it can do RAID :        6x SATA2 (3Gb/s) w/ RAID 0, 1, 5, 10

Probably this need to be set to disabled.

[Stefano]

you can always expect linux to do the magic

reboot with cd in rescue mode and follow this post:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46617.msg228791.html#msg228791

[DanB35]

Thanks for the suggestions.  The BIOS RAID is turned off--it's in AHCI mode.  I'll try rebuilding the initrd as Stefano suggested.

[DanB35]

You're supposed to be able to boot into rescue mode by typing "linux rescue" at the CD boot prompt (where you'd normally enter "sme" to load the installer), right?  That doesn't seem to be working for me--it just boots into the installer.  Just in case there was something wacky with this server (and the fact that I'm doing everything remotely via IPMI), I tried it inside a fresh VM, with the same result--entering "linux rescue" boots to the installer.  So does entering "sme rescue" and "linux root=/dev/md1".  Entering simply "rescue" doesn't work at all--no such boot image.  This is using the SME 8.1 i386 ISO, downloaded a couple of days ago.  Off to do some more digging...

[DanB35]

OK, I'm an idiot.  Booting into rescue mode actually worked fine; I was misunderstanding what it should do.  I was expecting it would drop me directly into a shell, while it actually loads the installer to set language/keyboard and network (if desired).  I wasted quite a bit of time on that.

So, having determined that I could actually boot into rescue mode, I did so, used chroot to reset the root to where my drive was mounted, and used the command Stefano linked to to build a new initrd image.  And it works!  Well, mostly.

The command as posted was

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mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)which, as best I can figure from the mkinitrd manpage, will build a new initrd.img for the kernel version currently running (which was the one on the 8.1 install CD--2.6.18-371.4.1.el5)--and that's what it did.  Due to system updates since 8.1 was released, the previously running kernel was 2.6.18-371.8.1.el5PAE.

So, figuring I'd be clever, after running the command above, I also ran
mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-2.6.18-371.8.1.el5PAE.img 2.6.18-371.8.1.el5PAE

This also appeared to run without errors.  However, when I chose that option from the grub boot menu, I was back to the same errors I posted at the start of this thread.  If I choose 2.6.18-371.4.1.el5 from the grub menu, the system boots and runs without apparent issue.

[Stefano]

remove the newer kernel with rpm -e, then do an update via yum..

should work

[DanB35]

Of course--I'd been thinking if I waited for the next kernel upgrade, that should do it, but I hadn't thought of removing and reinstalling the existing (latest) kernel.  That worked fine--it booted with the new kernel and is now reporting the full 8 GB of RAM.  Thanks for the help!