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I’ve been working on a customers system, upgrading the motherboard and memory for better performance and reliability. We replaced an MSI motherboard with a SuperMicro Server board. When I tried to boot up the system after installing the new hardware, I got the following message in the screen.


uncompressing linux
OK booting the kernel
Red Hat nash version 4.2.1.10 starting
Ext3-fs: unable to read superblock
mount error 22 mounting ext3
mount error 2 now mounting none
switchroot: mount failed 22
umount /initrd/dev failed 2
Kernel panic not syncing
Attempted to kill init


It’s been a while since I had issues like this. So I went looking through Google for answers. Isn’t that what everyone does these days? Everything search showed seemed to indicate a problem with the the raid. So I tried to look for a problem with the raid partitions. First I used Knoppix. I found a web site Recover Data From RAID1 LVM Partitions With Knoppix Linux LiveCD I followed the instructions, using mdadm –examine –scan to examine the partitions and manually set up the raid. Everything worked fine. I could see the raid partitions, I could mount them and view the data. cat /proc/mdstat showed the proper raided partitions. So what’s the problem?

Next I tried the rescue option of the Centos CD. The system booted fine, and the rescue mode dutifully mount all the partitions in the right order to /mnt/sysimage. But still no love when I tried to boot. Next I got on irc and talked to some of my friends from KPLUG.

One suggested trying to boot to the grub prompt and running boot options by hand, using tab completion. He suggested that perhaps the system wasn’t recognizing the drive. It seemed plausible, so I tested it. But the system seemed to be finding the /boot partition just fine and tab completion found the init ram disk fine.

Another suggested that the failure of the system to recognize the drives was caused by not loading the proper controller module. This had not occurred to me, because I thought I remembered that all the modules for hard drive host controllers were built into the kernel. At least that’s the way I used to build them. I remembered wrong. My friend suggested that I look at /etc/modprobe.conf and check the scsci_hostadapter parameter. So I booted into the Centos CD rescue mode, as the system booted I noticed the message loading ata_piix. This was the clue I had been missing. I edited the /etc/modprobe.conf file and changed the reference there. When I attempted to reboot the system the raid partitions were recognized and the system finished booting.

Once upon a time, modules for hard drives were included in the kernel, not loaded at boot time. Now with the size of kernels getting very large, nearly everything is loaded at boot. That’s fine for things like ethernet and sound cards. It’s always been a point of pride with me, that we could take the hard drives from one system, and install them into another system and it would just run. I guess that’s no longer true.

IMNSHO this is not progress.

After some poking around I found the solution to my ldap problem. I started reading the log files, turned on debugging in the init.d file and determined ldap was not starting. I started reviewing and checking the slapd.conf file and noticed that I was missing the samba.schema file, previously named samba3.schema.
So I started [...]

I recently decided it was time to upgrade my workstation from Etch to Lenny. Several of the applications were showing bugs and it looked like Lenny had stabilized enough to use it. I’m alway reluctant to upgrade. In my experience something always breaks, and I spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out how [...]

I’ve been using Amarok for months to manage and listen to my digital music collection. I really like the interface. And I like the ability to manage my collection, add and manage tags and import music into my collection. Yesterday however, it lost my collection. My music is still all there.
I was importing some music [...]

Posted a review of manDVD, a program for creating slideshows and dvds. Review

Just completed my review of the EnGarde 3.0.22 Community Firewall.
I would use and recommend this product. I think this is one of the better open source firewalls I’ve looked at. With the default install, less a few packages, it looks to be a very secure system. The WebTools seem to work well enough. It’s a [...]

Spent yesterday grabbing screenshots and preparing a review of the Untangle firewall.  A little later I intend to look at it again, this time in bridge, instead of gateway mode.
Enjoy.

I’ve been taking a Linux course at National City Adult Education Center. It’s a basic course and I’m taking it because the school imposed a 20 student minimum to hold the class. Without the class, the Kernel-Panic Linux User Group Installfests, would have to find a new venue. I’m also taking the class because [...]

I’ve decided to take a look at various open source firewalls, as part of preparation for a upcoming presentation I want to do for my user group Kernel Panic Linux User Group. I want to talk about open source alternatives to proprietary firewalls from companies like Sonicwall , Cisco, Linksys, Watchguard, Netgear, Fortinet, Juniper [...]

I’ve been asked by a customer to investigate multi wan routers. The customer uses a lot of bandwidth for their applications and so need to get the most bandwidth for the minimum price.

I’ve been looking at the Syswan SW88. It’s competitively priced, reportedly has very good tech support, and it will use up to eight [...]