[CentOS] rebuilding anaconda for centos 4.0

Fri Apr 29 10:42:20 UTC 2005
Morten Kjeldgaard <mok at bioxray.dk>

On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 05:02:58PM -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 14:24 -0500, David Thompson wrote:
> > David Thompson wrote:
> > >
> > >Hi all:
> > >
> > >I'm trying to rebuild the anaconda installer for Centos 4.0 (i386) to add some
> > > 
> > >RPMs and do some other things, and I've run into a problem.  I've done lots of
> > > 
> > >anaconda rebuilds for Tao Linux 1.0, and I'm bringing those bits forward into 
> > >Centos 4.0.  The all-knowing web hasn't turned up anything useful.  It looks 
> > >like the PXE-loaded kernel unpacked and mounted the initrd OK, but then things
> > > 
> > >went awry (quickly).  Anyone seen this on a PXE boot of an anaconda build?
> > >
> > ><snip>
> > >RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
> > >VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
> > >VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(3,2)
> > >Please append a correct "root=" boot option
> > >Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,2)
> > 
> > Well, since no one replied to this I'll follow up my own post.
> > 
> > It turns out that the 2.6.9-5.0.3.EL series of kernels has a bug in loop back 
> > mounting file systems:
> > 
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=105595
> > 
> > (the bug is filed against fc3 but affects the original centos 4.0 kernels as 
> > well.)  The bug prevents the initrd.img in anaconda from being populated, and 
> > everything goes kaplooey as soon as the PXE boot tries to do anything with 
> > it's initrd.  It would also affect rebuilt ISO images.
> > 
> > The fix is to upgrade the host running buildinstall to a 2.6.9-5.0.5.EL 
> > kernel, which has a fix for bug 105595.  Then everything works just fine.
> > 
> > --
> > Dave Thompson  ( thomas(at)cs(dot)wisc(dot)edu )
> > 
> > Associate Researcher                  Department of Computer Science
> > University of Wisconsin-Madison       http://www.cs.wisc.edu/(twiddle)thomas
> > 1210 West Dayton Street
> > Madison, WI 53706-1685
> > --
> 
> Thank you very much for the follow up post.

Thank you very much for your thank you very much post. Btw, check out 
this link: http://www.river.com/users/share/etiquette/

/Morten

-- 
Morten Kjeldgaard, Asc. professor, Ph.D.
Department of Molecular Biology, Aarhus University
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