[CentOS] PXE-Kernel crashes with "RAMDISK: incomplete write ..." after modifiying initrd.img

Fri Mar 27 15:40:40 UTC 2009
Frank Thommen <frank.thommen at embl-heidelberg.de>

Tru Huynh wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 04:04:40PM +0100, Frank Thommen wrote:
>> This give a slightly different error message:
>>
>> [...]
>> md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
>> md: autorun ...
>> md: ... autorun DONE.
>> VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(253,3)
>> Please append a correct "root=" boot option
>> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on
>> unknown-block(253,3)
>>
>>
>> The two "RAMDISK" error lines have gone.  I have archived 
>> modules/modules.cgz *and* initrd.img with "-H newc".
> only the initrd needs "-H newc"

I tried also with non-newc for modules.cgz but this doesn't help. 
However when I look at the original, gunzipped modules.cgz wich `file`, 
then I get "ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)" which would also be 
'newc'.


> This one works for me
> LABEL centos5
>  MENU LABEL ^1) centos 5 x86_64 raid1 ks
>  KERNEL centos5.x86_64/vmlinuz
> APPEND initrd=centos5.x86_64/initrd.img method=http://10.0.0.4/pub/linux/c5/os/x86_64  noipv6 syslog=10.0.0.4 kssendmac ip=dhcp ks=http://10.0.0.4/ks/c5-raid1-64-min.cfg


That is more or less what we have:

   KERNEL CentOS-5.2_64/vmlinuz
   APPEND initrd=CentOS-5.2_64/initrd.img ramdisk_size=5940 kssendmac
ks=http://srv/ks/ks.cgi noipv6


This should not be the problem as it works fine for the unmodified 
initrd.img.


frank