xen discuss - Oct 2009 - Booting osol PV domU on UFS

Hi,

I am trying to migrate a default PV install of opensolaris (on ZFS) to UFS. I 
have attached another zvol to the original PV domU, created a proper vtoc (with 
root slice), copied all the contents, created the stub /dev and /devices, added 
a vfstab entry, created a bootsign, recreated the boot-archive and installed
grub.

The menu.lst is

root@os_0906:~# cat /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst
#splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#background 215ECA
timeout 30
default 0
#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title OpenSolaris 2009.06
findroot (rootfs0,0,a)
#root (hd0,0,a)
kernel$ /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -v
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------

Strangely, when I create the boot-archive with the default create_ramdisk, the 
boot fails because it seems to expect a UFS file system on the ramdisk created 
from the boot_archive:

NOTICE: mount: not a UFS magic number (0x0)
Cannot mount root on /ramdisk:a fstype ufs

panic[cpu0]/thread=fffffffffbc60560: vfs_mountroot: cannot mount root

fffffffffbc93360 genunix:vfs_mountroot+350 ()
fffffffffbc93390 genunix:main+f0 ()
fffffffffbc933a0 unix:_locore_start+80 ()

As a first try, I have modified create_ramdisk to create a UFS boot_archive, but
this does not solve the issue:

panic[cpu0]/thread=fffffffffbc60560: Cannot find /devices

fffffffffbc93320 genunix:vfs_mountdevices+1d1 ()
fffffffffbc93360 genunix:vfs_mountroot+228 ()
fffffffffbc93390 genunix:main+f0 ()
fffffffffbc933a0 unix:_locore_start+80 ()

My impression is that the modifications I made somehow disabled the "new
boot"
process and the kernel expects a real root file system rather than the ramdisk
now.

I guess this might be something no-one has ever bothered to try, but I would 
appreciate any pointers as to what I might have missed to do or how to further 
debug this.

Thank you very much in advance,

Nils

Nils Goroll wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to migrate a default PV install of opensolaris (on ZFS) to 
> UFS. I have attached another zvol to the original PV domU, created a 
> proper vtoc (with root slice), copied all the contents, created the stub 
> /dev and /devices, added a vfstab entry, created a bootsign, recreated 
> the boot-archive and installed grub.
Did you update bootenv.rc?  UFS root needs this to decide which drivers
to load to mount the disk... For ZFS is stored in the meta data (which can
be a problem when you move the disk around).


bash-3.2# grep bootpath /boot/solaris/bootenv.rc
setprop bootpath ''/xpvd/xdf@51712:a''





MRJ

Hi Mark,
> Did you update (bootpath in) bootenv.rc?
Great, that was it, *thank you VERY much* for your help! In retrospect, I
can''t
understand why I didn''t consider this basic setting - I guess this is a
good
example for why we humans need to communicate... ;-) Again, thank you very much!

Nils