Hi All

I am trying to install RHEL AS 4.0 on HP Itanium rx7640currently with 1 73GB SCSI HDD through LSI 1030 SCSI Controller. I started with the HP Smart Setup CD. I am making only 3 partitions as follows:
/boot/efi - type vfat - 100MB
SWAP - 32GB (I have 16GB memory)
/ - type ext3 - 20GB

The installation is successful, but when i reboot i get the following message:-

ELILO boot: Uncompressing Linux... done
Loading initrd initrd-2.6.9-5.EL.img...done
audit(1185269336.355:0): initialized
i8042.c: i8042 controller self test timeout.
Red Hat nash version 4.1.18 starting
mkrootdev: label / not found
mount: missing mount point
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

I booted into the rescue mode and have tried the following commands:-
e2label /dev/hda5 /
e2label /dev/hda3 /boot (this didn't work)
fdisk -l gave the following output
---------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/sda: 73.4 GB, 73407865856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 8924 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 8925 71687368+ ee EFI GPT
---------------------------------------------------------
I am unable to get it up anyway.

Can anybody help

At boot time when you see the GRUB menu do you have something such as;
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-<Kernel-Version> ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-<Kernel-Version>.img

I would personally try to rebuild grub manually, get to the grub prompt and reinstall the boot loader on the MBR. Or just boot in Recovery Mode again and check your /etc/grub.conf to see if it looks similar to this.
####################################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/cciss/c0d0p6
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/cciss/c0d0
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-55.ELsmp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-55.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-55.ELsmp.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES-up (2.6.9-55.EL)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-55.EL ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-55.EL.img


Another thing, can you chroot to the filesystem, or even try to remount everything?
chroot / #if this doesn't work go to the next step.
partprobe; mount -a; mount -o remount, /

Hi

Like u said i checked for the GRUB at boot time but it wasnt there, there was no grub.conf. So i wanted to reinstall the Boot Loader. I went into rescue mode and there was no /sbin/grub-install either. I dont know how i should go about it.

I am installing from a console (serial), my server is headless (no monitor, mouse or keyboard. Further i want to bring to your notice again - i have one 73GB SCSI HDD and did 3 partitions (no VGs, PVs or LVs - i didnt get them in the text based installer)
/boot/efi - vfat - 100 MB
/ - ext3 - 20 GB
SWAP - 32 GB

But in rescue mode when i "fdisk -l", the output is:
---------------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/sda: 73.4 GB, 73407865856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 8924 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 8925 71687368+ ee EFI GPT
---------------------------------------------------------------
Shouldn't it have shown the physical partitions

Yes, i can chroot (chroot /mnt/sysimage does seem to work)

"mount -o remount" gave the following output:-
/dev/root.old on / type ext2 (rw)
/proc on /proc type proc (rw,nodiratime)
/dev/pts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /tmp type ramfs (rw)
none on /tmp/ramfs type ramfs (rw)
/tmp/loop0 on /mnt/runtime type cramfs (ro)
/selinux on /selinux type selinuxfs (rw)
/dev/sda3 on /mnt/sysimage type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sysimage/boot/efi type vfat (rw,nodiratime,fmask=0022,dmask=00
22,check=r)
none on /mnt/sysimage/proc type proc (rw,nodiratime)
none on /mnt/sysimage/sys type sysfs (rw)
/dev/root.old on /mnt/sysimage/dev type ext2 (rw)

"mount -a" says:-
Cannot read /etc/fstab: No such file or directory

If you are here, thank you for sparing your valuable time

Regards

Hi once again!

I'm sorry none of that worked, I have a really silly question for you. Did you happen to put these partitions as extended? Another thing I'd like to ask you is this; is the data on the hard drive right now mission critical? Or is this a basic install? You just may be able to re-image the machine and save a lot of trouble.

Other than that I can only offer one other solution. It seems as if Red Hat is trying to boot VIA label name instead of the actual BLOCK device, such as /dev/<harddrivename>


##################I'm going to use /dev/hda as default, replace /hda with the name of your block device such as scsi /dev/sda and so on#######

1.) grub-install /dev/hda -- sets up grub in the MBR
#Boot in rescue mode and press a key to stop grub from trying to boot the image, "i" again.


2.)grub-install -root-directory=/boot /dev/hda -- sets up grub in the /boot directory

3.)grub>find /boot/grub/stage1

If you get a result back the rest of your stuff will be on that disk
as well, then you could run:
grub> root (hd0,0) -- assuming that's what the find command returned
above.
grub> kernel /boot/vmlinux-<kernel version>


**reboot*

Good luck mate!

For what it's worth, I have a couple of RHEL 4.5 running here on HP rx4640 Itanium, and I never bother with HP's smart setup ( I thought it was for windows only...).

You should download RHEL 4 update 5 isos, instead of installing 4.0 and then upgrade to 4.5...

It should work out of the box, there's something wrong if you need to use the rescue disk only to get the OS up and running.

As a side note, you can use the built-in EFI shell to edit your boot parameters (in /boot).



Yanik

Hi Yanik

Thanks! Appreciate it. Like you said, I am downloading RHEL AS 4.0 U5 and going to try with you. I'll get back to you for more help.

Best Regards
Siddhartha