belated IDE_GD removal Part II [SOLVED]

Gentree · Last edited by Gentree on Sat Oct 26, 2013 8:40 am; edited 1 time in total

Yesterday I got system booting again using the now current 'let's pretend everything is sata' paradigm.

My IDE now gets misread as being a SATA, IDE:0 being mapped to /dev/sdc

Now I'm trying to get my fallback rootfs to boot in a similar way: kernel panic !

The scheme that I have run for years it to only have essential system dirs on the root fs. ie /home /usr/portage /var/www/localhost and other stuff gets hived off as separate partitions.

This means I can have a smallish root fs (circa 13 GB) of which I keep a clone, with a suitable extra line in grub.conf so that, if something like a bad package update bricks my Gentoo I can just reboot to the fallback in no time and fix the mess when time allows.

The only difference between the rootfs images is to swap the mount points of rootfs and the clone in /etc/fstab.

Previously this was set up as /dev/sda11 and /dev/hda11

The aim now is to map this to the new all-sata device names.

Now as I said, SATA boot is working fine and my old IDE is now showing as /dev/sdc. All seems well

but if I try to boot with grub command including root=/dev/sdc11 I get a kernel panic.

Last thing I see is sdb showing 6 partition numbers , which is my second physical SATA. Then it spews enough output in the panic that I can't see the rest, scrolled off the screen.

That seems to imply that IDE drive is not getting detected and set up as sata and hence there's no /dev/sdc* and no root fs. :roll:

Now, it's the same grub.conf file booting the same kernel from the same partition. All I've done is changes "root=" command line option from /dev/sda11 to /dec/ssdc11

How can this prevent it finding the partition with the rootfs image?

TIA, Gentree.

_________________
Linux, because I'd rather own a free OS than steal one that's not worth paying for.
Gentoo because I'm a masochist
AthlonXP-M on A7N8X. Portage ~x86

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Did you update kernel both for your standard system and for your rescue disk ?
Also, are sata drivers builtins or modules ? If you aren't using an initramfs (or haven't updated it with new kernel), the later won't work.

Gentree · Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 7:49 am Post subject:

It's the _same_ kernel booting off the same partition, ie it's the same kernel image file. All I change is "root=" part of the grub command. Copy / Paste so no transcription errors. It's literally the same line with one letter changed c/sda11/sdc11/

The two root fs are identical ( cp -a ) with the exception of the change to fstab that I noted above.

I've been using this scheme for about 5 years and it works perfectly ( when IDE drives are hda ).

.config and lspci are given in the previous thread on the change-over problems:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=7425448#7425448

I do have an initrd but it just provides a background image for the boot process. That is also identical and worked for years.
initrd=/boot/initrd-1024x768

Thanks
_________________
Linux, because I'd rather own a free OS than steal one that's not worth paying for.
Gentoo because I'm a masochist
AthlonXP-M on A7N8X. Portage ~x86

Gentree · Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 8:05 am Post subject:

Ah, indeed, the PATA_AMD module was not built in. That was not a prob whilst booting root fs on SATA but meant it was not available when needed at boot time when using IDE.

Now posting from the clone.

Thanks for pointing out what I was over-looking. I originally left it as module so I could see whether it was getting pulled in or not. Then forgot to include it in the kernel.

Now for scary bit , trying to update a Gentoo system that is has not had a full update since a year ago....

_________________
Linux, because I'd rather own a free OS than steal one that's not worth paying for.
Gentoo because I'm a masochist
AthlonXP-M on A7N8X. Portage ~x86