Hi, I am having a problem when booting a 2.6.14 kernel on a machine running Sarge. The machine is a Compaq Pentium-II @ 300 MHz PC with a Promise ATA/RAID disk controller.
I am building the 2.6.14 kernel from the linux-2.6.14.tar.gz from kernel.org. Of course, in "make config", I have the appropriate driver for my ATA/RAID controller built into the kernel (not a module): CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC202XX_NEW=y I am also using a 2.4.29 kernel from the linux-2.4.29.tar.gz from kernel.org. Again, the appropriate driver for my ATA/RAID controller is built into the kernel (not a module): CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC202XX_NEW=y The 2.4.29 kernel boot flawlessly. The 2.6.14 starts booting but stops with a kernel panic: RAMDISK: cramfs filesystem found at block 0 RAMDISK: Loading 2074 KiB [1 disk] into ram disk... done VFS: mounted root (cramfs system) read only. Freeing unused kernel memory: 200k freed initrd-tools: 0.1.81.1 mount: unknown filesystem type 'devfs' FATAL: module hptraid not found. FATAL: module pdcraid not found. umount: devfs: not mounted mount: unknown filesystem type 'devfs' umount: devfs: not mounted pivot_root: No such file or directory /sbin/init: 432: cannot open dev/console: No such file Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! You're gonna say "Well, just remove devfs from the kernel, you don't need it". But in 2.6.14 there is no devfs, it's completely gone. "make config" never asks you about devfs. If you look at the boot process, you can see "VFS: Mounted root (cramfs filesystem) readonly. initrd-tools: 0.1.81.1". This means the machine is able to mount its root filesystem and its initrd image. As I said above, if I boot a 2.4.29 kernel with the same ATA/RAID controller, it boots flawlessly. If now I remove my ATA/RAID controller, both the 2.6.14 and 2.4.29 kernels boot flawlessly. (Obviously, I need to rename "/dev/ataraid/d0px" to "/dev/hdax" but it's not a major problem)... So why is it that on with a 2.6.14 kernel I get a kernel panic at boot ? A problem with initrd ? devfs ? ... the ATA/RAID driver ? It has been pointed that the actual problem might be that "/dev/ataraid/d0px" isn't the correct device name in the 2.6.x kernel. However I have read in Documentation/devices.txt that in 2.6.14, a Promise Fastrak ATA/RAID controller will be a block device with major 114 and minor 1,2... So in 2.6.x, the partitions are named /dev/ataraid/d0p1, /dev/ataraid/d0p2, ... just as in 2.4.x. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Alex
