CentOS - Nov 2013 - CentOS LiveCD on USB

I have been following these instructions:
https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=501
to put a bunch of utilities (Clonezilla, SystemRescue, CentOS netinstall/rescue,
etc.)
on a single USB key.  It works great for everything (including Ubuntu Live)
except the
CentOS 6.4 LiveCD. (You can see my postings at the bottom of the forum.) When
booting the LiveCD, I got:
	Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
	Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32-358.el6.i686 #1
After removing "quiet" and adding "selinux=disabled", I got
more information; the boot
stalls after finding devices, and gives:
	No root device "block:/dev/mapper/live-rw" found
dracut suggests adding "rdshell", which I did.  This was not helpful
(I had no idea what
to do in the dracut shell), but did notice that in the dracut shell /dev/ did
NOT seem to
contain my USB drive at /dev/sdb as I would expect. (One reason it seemeed not
helpful) So:
1) I used VFAT rather than ext2/3/4. Do I have to use ext2/3/4?
2) Do I need to rebuild the initramfs file somewhere in the CentOS LiveCD
directory?
3) Is this just a straight-up hardware incompatibility? The computer is a
brand-new
SuperMicro X10SAE Haswell system.

Thanks,
-G.
--
Glenn Eychaner (geychaner at lco.cl)
Telescope Systems Programmer, Las Campanas Observatory

Glenn Eychaner wrote:
> I have been following these instructions:
> https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=501
> to put a bunch of utilities (Clonezilla, SystemRescue, CentOS
> netinstall/rescue, etc.) on a single USB key.  It works great for
everything (including
> Ubuntu Live) except the CentOS 6.4 LiveCD. (You can see my postings at
the bottom of
> the forum.) When booting the LiveCD, I got:
> 	Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
> 	Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32-358.el6.i686 #1
> After removing "quiet" and adding "selinux=disabled", I
got more
Get rid of rhgb, too.
> information; the boot stalls after finding devices, and gives:
> 	No root device "block:/dev/mapper/live-rw" found
> dracut suggests adding "rdshell", which I did.  This was not
helpful (I
> had no idea what to do in the dracut shell), but did notice that in the
dracut
> shell /dev/ did NOT seem to contain my USB drive at /dev/sdb as I would
expect.

When you boot from a USB key, it always shows as /dev/sda. Second, rdshell
is a grub shell.

Are you trying to boot from the USB? If so, I'd fix the grub menu on that,
if it's on /dev/sda1 of the flash drive, to use /dev/sda2 for the root
        mark

I had already gotten rid of rghb. The grub2 entry on the key for booting the
LiveCD reads:

menuentry "CentOS 6.4 Live" {
set root=(hd0,1)
linux /CentOS-Live/isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=UUID=A352-6D7C ro liveimg nodiskmount
nolvmmount selinux=disabled live_dir=/CentOS_Live/LiveOS
initrd /CentOS-Live/isolinux/initrd0.img
}

The contents of the LiveCD appear in /CentOS_Live as one would expect. The
boot fails right after a device scan (obvious by tens of lines listing
"ataN:",
"scsiN:", "sd 0:0:0:0:", etc.) with the "No root
device" error below.

In the rdshell, /dev/sda shows up as the internal system hard drive rather
than the USB key. The USB key does not show up as /dev/sdb nor any
other device that I can find. Finally, I looked in /dev/mapper (duh); it
contains /dev/mapper/control, but no /dev/mapper/live-rw.

Sorry for any confusion,
-G.

m.roth wrote:
> Glenn Eychaner wrote:
> > I have been following these instructions:
> > https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=501
> > to put a bunch of utilities (Clonezilla, SystemRescue, CentOS
> > netinstall/rescue, etc.) on a single USB key.  It works great for
> everything (including
> > Ubuntu Live) except the CentOS 6.4 LiveCD. (You can see my postings at
> the bottom of
> > the forum.) When booting the LiveCD, I got:
> > 	Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
> > 	Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32-358.el6.i686 #1
> > After removing "quiet" and adding
"selinux=disabled", I got more
> 
> Get rid of rhgb, too.
> 
> > information; the boot stalls after finding devices, and gives:
> > 	No root device "block:/dev/mapper/live-rw" found
> > dracut suggests adding "rdshell", which I did.  This was not
helpful (I
> > had no idea what to do in the dracut shell), but did notice that in
the
> dracut
> 
> > shell /dev/ did NOT seem to contain my USB drive at /dev/sdb as I
would
> expect.
> 
> When you boot from a USB key, it always shows as /dev/sda. Second, rdshell
> is a grub shell.
> 
> Are you trying to boot from the USB? If so, I'd fix the grub menu on
that,
> if it's on /dev/sda1 of the flash drive, to use /dev/sda2 for the root
--
Glenn Eychaner (geychaner at lco.cl)
Telescope Systems Programmer, Las Campanas Observatory