Problem with kernel image in a Prep Boot on PowerPC

From: Márcio Oliveira
Date: Wed Aug 24 2005 - 10:09:34 EST


Hi There!

I have a IBM Power server and I want to put the /boot partition onto softwrae RAID1 array, but I'm having some problems...

Aparently yaboot boot loader doesn't support /boot partition on a linux software RAID 1, so i'm trying to put the kernel image (zImage.initrd) directly on the Prep Boot partition. But when the system boots, the kernel can't locate the initrd or the root partition ("Kernel Panic" no init found message).

I think the kernel is pointing to the wrong root partiotion. In a x86 box, I can change the kernel root partition in the boot loader (root= parameter) or using the "rdev" command. In my case, the IBM Power doesn't have a boot loader (yaboot was replaced by the kernel image) and the powerpc64 system doesn't have the rdev command (from util-linux package, the same package on x86 systems have the rdev command!).

Is there a way to change the default root partition in my ppc64 kernel image?

I followed this steps to made the configuration of the kernel image:

# cd /usr/src/linux-2.4
# cp /boot/config-2.4.21-4.EL swinitrd.config
Edit the file Makefile to change the EXTRAVERSION variable to match the running kernel: EXTRAVERSION= -4.EL
# cp /boot/initrd-2.4.21-4.EL.img /usr/src/linux-2.4/arch/ppc64/boot/ramdisk.image.gz
# cd /usr/src/linux-2.4
# make distclean
# cp swinitrd.config .config
# make oldconfig
# make dep
# make zImage.initrd
# cp /usr/src/linux-2.4/arch/ppc64/boot/zImage.initrd /boot/zImage.initrd-2.4.21-4.EL
# cp /usr/src/linux-2.4/swinitrd.config /boot/config.initrd-2.4.21-4.EL
# dd if=/boot/zImage.initrd-2.4.21-4.EL of=/dev/sdb1 bs=512

This is my partition scheme:

Disk 1:
/dev/sda1 = Prep Boot Partition (10MB)
/dev/sda2 = RAID 1 - "/boot" partition (100MB)
/dev/sda3 = swap (300MB)
/dev/sda4 = Extendend
/dev/sda5 = RAID 1 - "/" root partition (34GB)

Disk 2:
/dev/sdb1 = Prep Boot Partition (10MB)
/dev/sdb2 = RAID 1 - "/boot" partition (100MB)
/dev/sdb3 = swap (300MB)
/dev/sdb4 = Extendend
/dev/sdb5 = RAID 1 - "/" root partition (34GB)

Any ideia about this issue?

Thanks a lot!

Márcio.
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