Syslinux - Oct 2006 - EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock (software RAID1)

Dear List,

I have used a utility called partimage to transfer data from a fully
working system to similar, but not identical hardware. The system has a
software RAID1, running RedHat EL3, kernel 2.4.21.

I have recreated my ramdisk in a chrooted rescue environment.

On boot, I see the grub menu, but it promptly fails with this:

EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock
mount: error 22 mounting ext3
pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
...
kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to the kernel.

Now - If I boot into resuce mode, edit my /etc/fstab to comment out the
top line, so it reads:
# /dev/md0   /   ext3   defaults   1 1
/dev/hda1   /   ext3   defaults   1 1

And change my grub.conf accordingly, so the root=/dev/hda1

In this case, the system will boot fine, obviously without RAID support.

What can I do to re-enable RAID?

Thanks for any feedback.

Chris

Hello,

I fear syslinux list is not the one you should post to for grub/raid1
problems...

However, short answer:
to boot a soft raid1 system with grub, you must have:
* /boot readable by grub, ie not in a LVM (typically, /boot is raid1 md0
ext3 while / /var /usr aso, are raid1 md1 in a LVM volume group).
* initrd built to support raid1 root. <- I guess yours is not (try
mkinitrd...).

You probably should look at grub project docs and for sure redhat docs.

Regards,
Pierre

ng2 at summerdale.co.uk wrote:
> Dear List,
> 
> I have used a utility called partimage to transfer data from a fully
> working system to similar, but not identical hardware. The system has a
> software RAID1, running RedHat EL3, kernel 2.4.21.
> 
> I have recreated my ramdisk in a chrooted rescue environment.
> 
> On boot, I see the grub menu, but it promptly fails with this:
> 
> EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock
> mount: error 22 mounting ext3
> pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
> umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
> ...
> kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to the kernel.
> 
> Now - If I boot into resuce mode, edit my /etc/fstab to comment out the
> top line, so it reads:
> # /dev/md0   /   ext3   defaults   1 1
> /dev/hda1   /   ext3   defaults   1 1
> 
> And change my grub.conf accordingly, so the root=/dev/hda1
> 
> In this case, the system will boot fine, obviously without RAID support.
> 
> What can I do to re-enable RAID?
> 
> Thanks for any feedback.
>