Re: [cobalt-developers] problems booting the redhat 7.3 kernel on a raq3

["John P. Looney" <valen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 12:41:34PM -0400, Gerald Waugh mentioned:
> > LABEL=/1                /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
> > LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext2    defaults        1 2
> > none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> > LABEL=/home             /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
> > none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
> > none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> > /dev/hda3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> The prom should know where the master boot record is.
> The kernel looks for and uses it when it mounts the drives

 Oh. I had grub installed, but it never seemed activated. Does the prom
check the master boot record for the boot partititon ? Should I have used
lilo instead of grub ?

 My current problem is that because I can't tell the boot loader to load 
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img, I can't mount / as ext3, and RAID won't
work.

 Can the prom check the bootloader somehow for kernel parameters ? I
tried:

Cobalt:Main Menu> boot
Cobalt:Boot Menu> set_params "initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img"
Cobalt:Boot Menu> bfd

 But it didn't seem to pick it up.

> >  As a workaround, I copied the files from hda1:/boot into hda2:/boot, and
> > set the "boot filesystem" in the PROM to be hda2. It will boot fine now.
> > I'm still curious though if it is possible for /boot and / to be different
> > partitions.
> Yes, /boot and / can be different partitions.
> Your fstab looks a little odd. I am used to seeing more /dev/hdx.
> maybe its redhat 7.3.

 RedHat has used partition labels for ages. Very handy when you move disks
around, you don't have to update your fstab. As I've learned, mkfs on a
partition wipes the label though. 
 
 (This bit me when I mkfs'd a /boot partition, changed it, added all the
files, and rebooted. It failed to mount next time, as the label was gone.
I reinstalled a kernel, and installed the new kernel into /boot on the /
filesystem (as the /boot partition didn't mount). Wiped the old modules in
/lib and rebooted. That meant that I'd a kernel/modules mismatch!).

Kate