2000-12-19 15:40:21

by Mike Black

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Subject: 2.2.18aa2 weird problem

I've got three machines -- two are identical motherboards. I've been using
the same kernel binary on all three machines for over a year thru all the
upgrades since 2.2.15 (16, 17, and now 18aa2).

Now that I've compiled 2.2.18aa2 it only works on two of the machines. Both
of these use RAID1/IDE for boot drives. The machine that doesn't work uses
a boot floppy as the root drive is RAID5.

When the "bad" machine boots a "df" that has been inserted in rc.inet2 shows
the correct root drive having been mounted. But, it seems as though the
system cannot see most of the RAID5 mount. Booting complains about
/etc/mtab~ not being a directory, /lib/modules/2.2.18aa2 not existing (even
though it IS there), and several other files missing. Executable binaries
seem to work though (i.e. all daemons try to start up).

The end results is that I can't login to the console (typing doesn't even
echo any characters). So, I'm somewhat restricted on what I can debug.
Remote telnet doesn't work either. Can't reboot either, have to alt-sysrq-U
and hit the reset key.

Rebooting this machine to 2.2.17-RAID works just fine

Might there be a problem with RAID5 as root?

________________________________________
Michael D. Black Principal Engineer
[email protected] 321-676-2923,x203
http://www.csihq.com Computer Science Innovations
http://www.csihq.com/~mike My home page
FAX 321-676-2355


2000-12-19 17:14:20

by Andrea Arcangeli

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Subject: Re: 2.2.18aa2 weird problem

On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 10:08:27AM -0500, Mike Black wrote:
> Rebooting this machine to 2.2.17-RAID works just fine

Which RAID patch are you using against 2.2.17 exactly? Also make sure you're
using exactly the same kernel configuration of 2.2.17-RAID.

> Might there be a problem with RAID5 as root?

Might be possible, I've not tested RAID5 as root (though I tested raid5 in
non-root mountpoints). OTOH you said it mounted things correctly and it somehow
booted, so I'm not sure what's going wrong... Just make sure it's really a
kernel issue ;).

Andrea