Bug 151884

Summary:	Installation stage 2: Using ext3 for / results in a panic()
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1	Reporter:	Michael Gross <mgross>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	Stanislav Visnovsky <visnov>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Blocker
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Beta 4
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	i586
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	L3	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Michael Gross 2006-02-17 17:32:50 UTC

I tried to install Beta4 using ext3 for the root-filesystem. Besides the fact that the partitioner formatted /boot with the wrong fs, the partion setup was completed successful and correctly (verified with fdisk).

Now, in the second stage of the installation, I received a kernel panic with a message of the sort ``ext3 not supported''. The panic resulted from the failed attempt to mount the root filesystem.

I consider this a very critical error that should be corrected very soon, obviously the normal kernel does not support ext3 anymore. I verified that ext3-support for the installation kernel works fine. Please note that many systems (specially root servers) are getting shipped with ext3 by default.

Comment 1 Chris L Mason 2006-02-17 18:02:00 UTC

Please post the exact kernel error.  We need it to determine if the bug is in the kernel code or in mkinitrd or the installer.

Comment 2 Michael Gross 2006-02-17 18:22:16 UTC

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Hello Chris,

while I checked out the fstab I realized that there were two entries for /, one with reiserfs and a wrong device (completely wrong) and a correct line. Nontheless, commenting out the wrong line did expectedly change nothing here:

Here the exact kernel messages (written down from the screen):

(...) # if you need more, ask for it
Loading processor
Loading thermal
Loading fan
Loading reiserfs
Attempting manual resume
rootfs: major=3 minor=4 devn=772
Mounting root /dev/hda4            # correct attempt
mount: unknown filesystem type `ext3`
unmount: /dev: device is busy
unmount: /dev: device is busy      # yes, is outputted twice
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init

It's quite possible the ext3 module was not loaded.

Comment 3 Michael Gross 2006-02-17 18:23:54 UTC

:/ sorry for the leading spaces... I will try out something now.

Comment 4 Chris L Mason 2006-02-17 18:37:31 UTC

ok, it looks very likely the initrd is missing ext3.  It is probably missing ext3 because it was confused about the list of filesystems.  Probably a yast bug, definitely not kernel.

Comment 5 Michael Gross 2006-02-17 18:56:51 UTC

OK, here it is:

The following two entries for / in fstab were created by YaST:

/dev/hda3     /     reiserfs   defaults        1  1
/dev/hda4     /     ext3       acl,user_xattr  1  1


I removed the wrong line from fstab which makes no difference here. I suppose only required modules are added to the initrd, then the second (and correct) line is getting ignored. This would indicate that this is a YaST problem, specially a problem with the partitioner!

Not to confuse the maintainer too much, I will redo the complete thing and create a new bugreport for this issue.

Suggestion: It would be a nice `fallback' if the initrd would contain all fs-modules mentioned in the fstab and output some warning if entries are doubled. This would at least not lead to a panic() if the affected fs is the
rootfs.

Comment 6 Michael Gross 2006-02-17 21:13:07 UTC

All handled in 151947 now...

Comment 7 Michael Gross 2006-02-17 21:13:18 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 151947 ***