Can't boot in after motherboard change

[glozz]

Good Day,

I've recently changed the motherboard of a redhat server that's been running fine otherwise. The new motherboard is different to the old one. I can't boot in now; getting "Kernal panic: VFS : Unable to mount root fs on 00:00" messages. I've run mkinitrd to rebuild the image file and have changed the grub.conf line to point to the new image file but it still occurs.

title Red Hat Linux (2.4.25)
root (hd0,0)
kernal /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd.img.2.4.18-14

However; during the bootup I spy some "unknown IDE device" errors along with some "IRQ resource cannot be reserved" and/or "Could not enable IDE device" or similar messages. As per attached image.

I can detect the harddisk when I bootup using rescuecd and that's how i rebuilt the image file. I have tried changing the "ro root=" to "ro root=/dev/hda3" or other hdax figures; but still the same. Any ideas?

Would I have to rebuild the kernel? Any idea how to do that? I'm still relatively new to linux administration. Thanks in advance.

[Rubberman]

Boot to the BIOS and carefully examine all the configuration options, such as PATA/SATA settings, etc. Remember, a new/different motherboard will require different drivers than your older one. In any case, this is a kernel and system configuration issue. The chipsets are different, so audio, video, disc, and other drivers will vary. Anyway, the "unknown ide devie) is indicating that your new mobo bios is configured for the wrong sata/pata(ide) setting, most likely.

[glozz]

Hmm; okay. What pata/ide setting do I have to be on the lookout for? And how would I be able to overcome the issues with the different drivers? Do I have to rebuild the kernel? How do I do that without wiping anything out?

Thanks for the reply.

[Rubberman]

Unless you already installed a customized kernel, you should not need to rebuild it. Since you are running the 2.4 kernel which doesn't have sata support (probably), then you need to configure the bios to emulate legacy drives, so that if you do have sata drives installed, they look like IDE/PATA drives. Honestly, without looking at the system, it is difficult to say what exactly is the problem except that the system isn't seeing your boot drive/partition properly. In any case, I would not have changed the initrd image before I did a complete drive image backup. How? By booting the new mobo from a live/rescue CD/DVD and plugging in an external drive to backup the entire system drive to that. Given a 1TB drive w/ enclosure is a $100USD or less these days, it is cheap insurance from totally screwing the pooch.

So, back to your problem You say you are getting "unknown IDE device" and similar errors such as "Could not enable IDE device". Check the drive cabling and jumpers. If you are using a cable that came with the mobo, make sure it isn't wired differently from your old one. In fact, I would use the old cable just to avoid having to switch jumpers on the drive(s).

BTW, how were you able to build and install a new initrd image if you weren't able to boot up in the first place?

[glozz]

Noted; thanks for the tips. That's the strange 'bit. I was able to access the drive using rescuecd and/or knoppix. I'm able to see all the data in there; so I doubt it's a disk-related issue. It's an old IDE drive though; nothing fancy there.

Any other thoughts? Thanks.

[Rubberman]

Well, your rescue CD may have been running a 2.6 kernel, which has a lot more smarts that 2.4 kernels did, so it may not mean a lot, other than the fact that the cables are ok...