Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

First, here is my current setup on the machine which I'm having problems 
with:

/dev/hda and /dev/hdb are both IDE 650.1 GB drives.  Currently hdb is a 
backup of the former hda and uses ReiserFS 3.6.

/dev/hda1: 256 MB, strictly a boot partition
/dev/hda2: 512 MB swap, machine has 2 GB of physical memory
/dev/hda3: the rest of the drive, intended for use with LVM

/dev/hdb1: 20 GB, root device with /boot and all but /home
/dev/hdb2: 1 GB swap
/dev/hdb3: the rest of the drive for /home

My problem is that my system won't boot no matter what I do.  I've tried 
everything I can think of.  I think I got lilo to work with the System 
Rescue CD, but Greg says that using it to fix lilo won't work on Debian 
so I'm not sure.  Basically what I want to do is have a volume group 
called main, eventually consisting of /dev/hda3 and all of /dev/hdb once 
I get the machine booting again.  For now, I set up 
/dev/mapper/main-root to use 8 GB, compared to the 19 GB it was using.  
I set up main-home to use 450 GB.  How do I get Debian to boot and use 
main-root as my root device?

In the rescue CD, I got lilo to work.  It will successfully add the 
Linux kernel with the initrd image.  The machine is Linux only.  I am 
running kernel 2.6.25-2-686 on Lenny.  When I try to boot, it seems to 
have no problem getting past lilo.  I verified that with sighted help 
and eventually by adding the Speakup module to my initrd.  The problem 
is that it can't find the root device (/dev/mapper/main-root) and dumps 
me in ash and the initramfs prompt.  If I manually do this from the 
initramfs shell, it works fine, so I don't get why it doesn't work by 
itself.  I can manually mount the filesystem like so:

mount -t xfs /dev/mapper/main-root /root

I can even manually chroot to /root and run /sbin/init, but I get errors 
and it still doesn't boot.  In lilo, I have the root device set to 
/dev/mapper/main-root, as well as /etc/fstab.  As I said before, I have 
a dedicated /boot partition since I understand LVM doesn't work on the 
boot device.  What am I doing wrong here?  I forgot to mention before, 
but one thing I wanted to do besides switch to LVM for boot is use the 
XFS filesystem instead of Reiser.  I've found Reiser to be much slower 
by comparison.

At one point out of desperation, I tried installing grub.  I had a 
/boot/grub but it was empty.  I ran the Debian update-grub script and it 
told me that my /usr was broken and that was that.  If I boot the rescue 
CD with root=auto, it boots /dev/sdb just fine but complains about 
modules missing because the kernel on the CD is not the one on the root 
device.  If I must switch to grub, fine but what am I missing?  I really 
don't think this is a lilo problem because it gets to initramfs just 
fine.  I've tried installing lilo to the MBR and the /dev/sda1 partition 
and it makes no difference.  I could really use help here.  If I left 
out some important information, let me know but I have no way to copy 
files from the machine because it doesn't seem to find the network now.  
Should I just forget LVM and use a normal static partition for my root 
device?  Do I need a different rescue CD?  I have grml if that would be 
better.  Again, any help would be appreciated.

Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

[Kerry Hoath]

You need to rebuild the initrd with update-initrams I believe it is called 
so it knows about the lvm setup.
You also need to edit the configuration files for
mkinitramfs so it includes all modules including lvm.

actually this should happen when you build the initial ramdisk.
Regards, Kerry.

Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

[Tony Baechler]

Kerry Hoath wrote:
> You need to rebuild the initrd with update-initrams I believe it is called 
> so it knows about the lvm setup.
> You also need to edit the configuration files for
> mkinitramfs so it includes all modules including lvm.
>   



I did, several times.  Unfortunately, I can't boot to the correct 
2.6.25-2-686 kernel because that is on the second drive and the 
initramfs won't boot, so the only way I can get to my system is with the 
rescue CD with a custom kernel.  I've ran update-initramfs several times 
and it complains that it can't find /proc/modules.  Of course it can't, 
/proc isn't mounted but I don't think it would matter because the 
modules are for the wrong kernel anyway.  The rescue CD has xfs, lvm and 
such built in, not loaded as modules, so I don't think that 
/proc/modules from that kernel would be correct.  I've verified that 
these things are built-in with lsmod.

Also, even when it builds an image, it's slightly bigger than my old 
backups as one would expect, but it still seems to make no difference.  
After it updates, it runs lilo and lilo gives no errors or warnings but 
still no boot.  I usually run this command:

update-initramfs -u

I had to use -t at one point because it said I had a custom initramfs 
when I know I didn't.  I could try -c and have it make a new one from 
scratch but see above about running different kernels.

Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

[Kerry Hoath]

Perhaps the people on irc.freenote.net or similar can help;
I use mkinitramfs to generate my initial ram disks and you need devmapper 
support in the kernel you're trying to boot lvm on.
Perhaps the speakup kernel is badly configured no idea.
Regards, Kerry.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot


Kerry Hoath wrote:
> You need to rebuild the initrd with update-initrams I believe it is called
> so it knows about the lvm setup.
> You also need to edit the configuration files for
> mkinitramfs so it includes all modules including lvm.
>



I did, several times.  Unfortunately, I can't boot to the correct
2.6.25-2-686 kernel because that is on the second drive and the
initramfs won't boot, so the only way I can get to my system is with the
rescue CD with a custom kernel.  I've ran update-initramfs several times
and it complains that it can't find /proc/modules.  Of course it can't,
/proc isn't mounted but I don't think it would matter because the
modules are for the wrong kernel anyway.  The rescue CD has xfs, lvm and
such built in, not loaded as modules, so I don't think that
/proc/modules from that kernel would be correct.  I've verified that
these things are built-in with lsmod.

Also, even when it builds an image, it's slightly bigger than my old
backups as one would expect, but it still seems to make no difference.
After it updates, it runs lilo and lilo gives no errors or warnings but
still no boot.  I usually run this command:

update-initramfs -u

I had to use -t at one point because it said I had a custom initramfs
when I know I didn't.  I could try -c and have it make a new one from
scratch but see above about running different kernels.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

[Tony Baechler]

Kerry Hoath wrote:
> Perhaps the people on irc.freenote.net or similar can help;
>   

OK, but since that machine currently can't access the network, that 
would be difficult.

> I use mkinitramfs to generate my initial ram disks and you need devmapper 
> support in the kernel you're trying to boot lvm on.
>   
How do you generate your ramdisks? What commands, modules, etc. I always 
use update-initramfs because it's the official solution suggested and 
installed with Debian, but I don't mind making my own if it solves the 
problem.

> Perhaps the speakup kernel is badly configured no idea.
>   


I'm using the standard Debian kernel 2.6.25-2-686, so I'm not sure what 
you mean. It uses Speakup modules, also standard supplied with Debian. 
It has no problem adding my LVM volumes on boot, it just won't mount 
/dev/mapper/main-root as my root device under /root in the initramfs 
image like it's supposed to. I can do it manually and it works fine. I 
specifically told it to add the xfs and dm_mod mdoules.

Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot

[Kerry Hoath]

I think you specify the root device as

/dev/lvgroup/lvvolume
so I have
/dev/gotss/gotss-usr

If you don't specify the volume group name the initrd has no idea you want 
to initialize lvm;
apart from that I am sorry mine works and I run ubuntu without speakup so no 
further ideas.

Regards, Kerry.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 5:59 PM
Subject: Re: Debian, lilo and LVM won't boot


Kerry Hoath wrote:
> Perhaps the people on irc.freenote.net or similar can help;
>

OK, but since that machine currently can't access the network, that
would be difficult.

> I use mkinitramfs to generate my initial ram disks and you need devmapper
> support in the kernel you're trying to boot lvm on.
>
How do you generate your ramdisks? What commands, modules, etc. I always
use update-initramfs because it's the official solution suggested and
installed with Debian, but I don't mind making my own if it solves the
problem.

> Perhaps the speakup kernel is badly configured no idea.
>


I'm using the standard Debian kernel 2.6.25-2-686, so I'm not sure what
you mean. It uses Speakup modules, also standard supplied with Debian.
It has no problem adding my LVM volumes on boot, it just won't mount
/dev/mapper/main-root as my root device under /root in the initramfs
image like it's supposed to. I can do it manually and it works fine. I
specifically told it to add the xfs and dm_mod mdoules.
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup