On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Saturday 27 November 2010 15:17:43 Mark Knecht wrote: >> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 6:59 AM, Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > I haven't had much luck with the 2.6.35 version of kernels - they have >> > cause panics on two different x86 boxen. >> > >> > Now that 2.6.35 has gone stable so I tried it again and I'm getting a >> > kernel panic complaining about VFS unable to mount root fs: >> > ================================== >> > VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3" or unknown-block(0,0) >> > Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available >> > partitions: Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on >> > unknown-block(0,0) Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.35-gentoo-r12 >> > #2 >> > Call Trace: >> > [<c14b3530>] ? panic+0x5f/0xc6 >> > [<c1693c68>] ? mount_block_root+0x1c2/0x245 >> > [<c1002930>] ? do_signal+0x766/0x7f2 >> > [<c1693d31>] ? mount_root+0x46/0x5a >> > [<c1693e8b>] ? prepare_namespace+0x146/0x182 >> > [<c1093203>] ? sys_access+0x1f/0x23 >> > [<c16933f1>] ? kernel_init+0x1a9/0x1b7 >> > [<c1693248>] ? kernel_init+0x0/0x1b7 >> > [<c10030b6>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x6/0x10 >> > panic occurred, switching back to text console >> > ================================== >> >> <SNIP> >> >> > Am I missing something obvious to make the 2.6.35 series work with my >> > boxen? > >> OK, there's so many possibilities for what causes this. Basic >> confusion ensues... >> >> 1) When booting, if you look carefully, is the initial kernel seeing >> _any_ disks? Sometimes they fly bye and are hard to catch. If it is >> then is it showing sda3? > > The moment the monitor comes on it's already crashed - the first line under > the penguins shows: > > Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... > > so I assume that any probing of drives has already happened. > >> 2) What sort of file system did you put on sda3? I assume this is >> built into the kernel if this is an upgrade? > > reiserfs built into the kernel and unchanged for the last umpteen kernel > series. > >> 3) Post the appropriate part of grub.conf to show how you are booting. > > title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.35-r12 > root (hd0,5) > kernel /kernel-2.6.35-gentoo-r12 root=/dev/sda3 > > The 2.6.34-r12 uses the same stanza except for *.35 being replaced with *.34 > >> 4) Post fstab > > /dev/sda6 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 1 > /dev/sda3 / reiserfs noatime 0 1 > /dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0 > [snip] > > I'll now build the kernel on the second x86 box and see what happens there. > -- > Regards, > Mick >
Yeah, all makes sense what you've done and I can only offer one more thing for you to look at. I skipped from 2.6.33 to 2.6.36 so I cannot say anything specific about the *.35 series, but one thing I've suffered with on my 2.6.36 build is that if I have a specific USB hub hooked up my machine won't complete a boot. I have to disconnect this USB hub prior to boot and then hook it back up after the boot completes. I've not had time to look for the cause so I only hook it up to use it. After boot there are no other problems I've seen. I was assuming that maybe there's some difference in the USB stuff that I hadn't discovered yet, and since you see a crash at a USB step possibly it's similar and I never saw it at *.35 because I never used that series? Good luck and I wish I could be of more help. Cheers, Mark