Re: [SLE] Problems with initrd after mkinitrd

Hi Patrick,

More fodder to keep you up at nights ;-)

On Tuesday 27 December 2005 13:16, Patrick Freeman wrote:
<snip>
> (BTW, thanks for the input, Terry) Well, interestingly, all of the
> machines were booting at cylinder 2082 prior to the mkinitrd problem --

Each cloned drive should theoretically have /boot and initrd "land" in the
same physical location when the image is written, correct? Yet, sometimes and
for unknown reasons, the clone doesn't completely "take" and you have to
reinstall Grub to make the system bootable. Hmm... interesting clue...

Please tell me you meant "sector" as in LBA and *not* "cylinder" as in CHS
addressing? <shiver!><Ugh!> (Pardon my flashbacks...!)

> All machines:
> -- AIC RMC2E2 chassis with hotpluggable SATA backplane.
> -- Intel SE7520BD2 motherboards with 6GB Registered ECC DDR RAM.
> -- Dual 2.8GHz (Low Voltage) Xeon's
> -- Ages range from ~1 year to ~2 months.

Your 40GB drives, mainboards and the BIOS are all contemporary enough to
support LBA, meaning the physical location of /boot and initrd is not an
issue... unless, of course, you accepted "Auto" in the BIOS' IDE drive setup
and the default just happens to be CHS (required by M$haft.)

Under that scenario, there *is* a possibility that the BIOS could be
calculating (and using) a geometry for the 'transplants' that doesn't
perfectly match the imaged partition table.

> The adapter is passive. My main problem with a hardware based
> resolution, is that things work 100% of the time with installation

Under this scenario, the drive starts it's service life out being prepped and
used in situ under the same BIOS. Have any of *these* systems experienced
boot failures following mkinitrd?

> and probably something like 95-98% of the time with imaging (the
> only failures being the grub hangs which are usually corrected by
> grub re-install -- which I think are actually the same symptom
> (retrospectively)

What is really missing in all of these discussions are the results of
meaningful forensics on all of the drives that are failing to boot. I think
this approach would bear fruit more quickly than a twenty system lab
experiment (maybe it isn't as much *fun* but that's another topic...)

regards,

- Carl

--
Check the headers for your unsubscription address
For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@xxxxxxxx
Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com
Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@xxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT Ping Jim
    ... the same down stream rate as your DSL line and their up stream rate is ... older machines on the cheap as long as the old bios can handle the larger ... Linux has it's own drivers for PATA drives, it doesn't use the bios, ...
    (rec.radio.cb)
  • Re: Sil 3112 SATA controller on old Iwill P4ES mobo
    ... I put a Pioneer DVD drive on two different machines with this ... early a SATA controller/port might not be standards compliant. ... drives is getting rather poor. ... Have you tried going into the motherboard BIOS and setting the SATA ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Re: Old PC - ASUS P5A-B - Will not boot Linux (Ubuntu)
    ... >>problems on some machines. ... > 2) I reset the BIOS to LOAD BIOS DEFAULTS, ... drives are present. ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)
  • Re: A couple of suggestions
    ... First on new machines you DO NOT HAVE CHANGE Jumpers Setting to boot ... On new machines, jumpers are No longer required because ALL SATA Drives do ... That is why in the bios you can change the boot sequence. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: HDD Compatibility
    ... and new larger drives appear in the ... BIOS Upgrades ... available expansion slot and then connecting your hard drives to it. ... than having to connect them to the controller card itself. ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)