Moving to different server - Won't boot past GRUB.

[jaredhanks]

I recently tried to clone a RHEL 4 system and migrate it to some different hardware (IBM Blade to an IBM x3650M2 rack mount). I'm getting an error when it tries to boot up. It gets past the grub part, but then errors out quickly with this error:

mount: error 6 mounting ext2
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

/etc/fstab looks like:

/dev/sda1               /                       ext2    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/sda3         	swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

grub.conf:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (2.6.9-67.0.15.ELsmp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-67.0.15.ELsmp ro root=/dev/sda1 rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-67.0.15.ELsmp.img

I've done this before, but the other system I migrated didn't have a separate "/" and "/boot" partition. I think this may be why it's having an issue. It seems like "/boot" is actually /dev/sda1 and "/" is /dev/sda2 (from booting up RHEL rescue disk). I've tried changing fstab and grub.conf, but I think I may be missing something.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jared

[Rubberman]

Well, the question one has to ask is, just how did you "clone" the system? Details, please.

[jaredhanks]

I took an image of the server using the Acronis True Image plugin for BartPE. I then used the same method to put the image on a new server. I've done this numerous times without issue, so I don't think that's the issue.

After doing some further investigation it may be related to a RAID driver issue. The other IBM servers only have 2 hard drives in a RAID1 config. This new server has 5 in a RAID5 config. The new server also has an ServeRAID MR10, when the other servers have something a little different (can't remember exactly what though).

[Rubberman]

As you discovered, when you clone a system this way, the target system hardware has to be functionally identical to the source system. Since this was not the case, such a failure is not unexpected. You might try a tool such as Clonezilla which is designed more for such non-symetrical operations.

[jaredhanks]

Haven't heard of Clonezilla. I'll have to try it out sometime.

We've found this issue is directly related to the IBM ServeRAID MR10i controller. IBM support says you must install the driver in order for it to boot properly.

It doesn't have anything to do with the GRUB configuration.