Hi all,

I have problems with booting Fedora Core 3 from an external USB drive.
Sometimes Fedora boots successfully, but mostly it fails with a kernel
panic. I have installed the Grub boot manager at MBR, and the kernel
release is 2.6.9-1.667. Here are the boot logs:

ata1: SATA ... irq 5
ata2: SATA ... irq 5
ata1: SATA port has no device.
scsi0 : ata_piix
ata2: SATA port has no device.
scs1 : ata_piix
Loading jbd.ko module
Loading ext3.ko module
Creating root device
Mounting root filesystem
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
Switching to a new root
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init

I couldn't localize the problem and i couldn't find out why the kernel
panic occurs. It seems to be arbitrary. Maybe I should build a new
kernel ?

Thanks for your advices,
Acubens

> Mounting root filesystem
> mount: error 6 mounting ext3
> mount: error 2 mounting none
> Switching to a new root
> switchroot: mount failed: 22
> umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
> Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init

here is the problem
it cannot mount the root file system (/) partition.
you say that it sometimes boot but other times does not, this is
improbable

if you do not change the hardware setup of your computer, the computer
will behave exactly the same way every time (at least it will boot up
the same way).
As you point out you have Fc3 installed on a external HDD, make sure
you plug in the external hdd before even turning on the computer.

If it still does not boot into the system this could be the problem -
Linux needs a "root partition" the '/' partition as it is called , to
use it it must be mounted before it can be used,
to mount this parition, this partition must be accessible to the kernel
, ie the corresponding modules ( drivers) for the hard disk must be
loaded.
Since you have a USB hard disk, to acces USB hd's USB mass storage
modules must be loaded before the root partition can be mounted, may be
the kernel is not loading them

also it seems you have no internal hard disk , is it true ?
also it would be helpful if you could tell me the boot paramters, ie
the grub lines in your grub.conf
there can be a lot of reasons this could be happening , please be
specific.
Tell us exactly what you do

Hi,
this is my grub.conf:

boot=/dev/sda1
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667smp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=/dev/sda3 5
initrd /usbinitrd.img

I have 2 partitions: /dev/sda1 is my boot-partition with mount point
/boot, and /dev/sda3 is my root-partition with mount point /.
Today there was this history:
I tried to boot, but it failed with kernel panic. Then I booted Knoppix
5.0.1. Knoppix could mount both partitions. Then I restarted my
computer again (after I had removed the Knoppix CD), and then Linux
booted successfully! Then I tried to restart my computer and tried to
boot Linux again, it failed again with kernel panic.
I couldn't find out the reason of this phenomenon.

xask schrieb:

> > Mounting root filesystem
> > mount: error 6 mounting ext3
> > mount: error 2 mounting none
> > Switching to a new root
> > switchroot: mount failed: 22
> > umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
> > Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init
>
> here is the problem
> it cannot mount the root file system (/) partition.
> you say that it sometimes boot but other times does not, this is
> improbable
>
> if you do not change the hardware setup of your computer, the computer
> will behave exactly the same way every time (at least it will boot up
> the same way).
> As you point out you have Fc3 installed on a external HDD, make sure
> you plug in the external hdd before even turning on the computer.
>
> If it still does not boot into the system this could be the problem -
> Linux needs a "root partition" the '/' partition as it is called , to
> use it it must be mounted before it can be used,
> to mount this parition, this partition must be accessible to the kernel
> , ie the corresponding modules ( drivers) for the hard disk must be
> loaded.
> Since you have a USB hard disk, to acces USB hd's USB mass storage
> modules must be loaded before the root partition can be mounted, may be
> the kernel is not loading them
>
> also it seems you have no internal hard disk , is it true ?
> also it would be helpful if you could tell me the boot paramters, ie
> the grub lines in your grub.conf
> there can be a lot of reasons this could be happening , please be
> specific.
> Tell us exactly what you do

Thats a rather strange behaviour !

Tell me something:
1.Do you have an internal hardisk or not ?, give all details of your
hard disk.

In amy case do this -
mount your fedora somehow, under knoppix or something,
copy /usbinitrd.img to a temporary location,
cp usbinitrd.img /tmp/usbinitrd.gz
gunzip usbinitrd.gz
mkdir tmp2
cd tmp2
cpio -id < ../usbinitrd

now you should have a lot of files in /tmp/tmp2 directory
edit the "init" file and copy and paste the contents here,
and also list the contents of /tmp/tmp2/lib (which contains modules
loaded at runtime)
or probably you could fix it up yourself,you just have to be able to
load the usb mass storage modules before making /dev/sda1 the root
partition.
I think this is the only problem,
It boots up sometimes and not other times is really strange!
may be the modules do not get enough time to initialize your hard disk
sometimes and in between the kernel tries to mount the root patition.