Triple Boot XP x64, Mandriva(Mandrake 10.2) and Fedora Core 4 x64

[wolvram 0]

.. all on one Hard drive. Yeah sounds like fun doesn't it.

 

Well I ran into only one problem, Fedora won't boot, keep getting a kernel panic. First I installed XP, then Mandrake (with GRUB 0.95) then Fedora 4 with no boot loader, Mandrake doesn't offer the option. 2 Partitions, hda3 and 4. 3 is the 102 mb ext3. 4 is the VolGroup00 seperated into LogVol0 ext3 and LogVol1 swap. Everything is porportioned according to the auto partitioning, except I manually did it to make space on the hard drive in case I wanted to stick SuSE in there. But anyway I would like to know what I need to put in to Grub for fedora to boot without a panic, this is what I got. I'll put a few above lines to help.

 

mounting root filesystem

kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds.

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot.initrd) failed : 2

umount /initrd/sys failed :2

umount /initrd/proc failed: 2

Initrd finished

Freeing unused kernel memory: 296k freed

Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

 

This is what it uses to boot.

 

kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-6mdksmp root=/dev/hda3

initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd-2.6.11-mdksmp.img

 

Then I tried removing some things and made it look like most posts on this forum and got.

 

kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

 

I get the same kernel panic. Now would you recommend just intalling fedora's grub over mandrakes or is there some way I can make this work. Also if I install fedoras over mandrake's I lose mandrake and gain fedora. Fedora doesn't see mandrake and mandrake doesn't see fedora. I can't mount fedora's partitions in mandrake and manually hunt down the path and file names of the kernel, root and initrd or I would've tried that. Ideas?

[danleff 0]

This is interesting! I just tried to install Fedora Core 5 test on a USB drive, relevant to another thread.

 

This is my first dealing with Logial Volume Management, as I always partition ahead of time and point Fedora to that partition. No LVM.

 

When you do the default Fedora installation and let it use it's default partitioning setup, LVM is by default.

 

I found that my SuSE Grub bootloader is refusing to see the LVM partition. If you did a default partitioning scheme, you probably have two partitions, a /boot partiton that holds the boot files, then the LVM partition.

 

What I did find, is that the kernel line with root=/dev/000 needs to point to the actual LVM of Fedora.

 

Did you install Fedora with the default options for partitions, or point it to a pre-formatted partition?

 

Your kernel line in grub may also out of sync.

 

kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

 

(hd0,4) refers to hda 5 and you root to hda3. Is this the case?

 

Remember,

 

(hd0,0) refers to hda1

(hd0,1) refers to hda2

(hd0,2) refers to hda3

(hd0,3) refers to hda4

 

...and so on.

 

But, I bet, if you have LVM, then the root= command needs to point to the actuall LVM, so;

 

kernel...root=/dev/hda3

 

Should read;

 

kernel... root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

 

or wherever the correct volume group and logical Volume is.

 

But, that is assuming that the Fedora Grub file is being used.

 

I would re-install Fedora and allow it's Grub to take over. It should pick up Mandrake, as well. If it does not, you can manually add the needed grub command to boot Mandrake later on, as you still have your Mandrake /boot/grub/menu.lst intact to refer to.

 

[wolvram 0]

Oh ok, kinda forgot about the offset by 1 thing when numbering in computer terms, rack that up to a brain fart.

 

the partition labels are actually hda3 and 4, so I need to change the boot to kernel (hd0,2) where the boot should be then of course correct the logical volume thing.

 

Well just tried it, pointed it to (hd0,2) and ,3) and got a cannot find file and cannot mount partition, and tried multiple combinations. like kern.. (hd0,2) root.. then initrd=(hd0,2),3),4) and so on. nothing really helped. I think it may actually be trying to boot fedora using mandrakes initrd img. I'm thinking I'll just forget this copy what mandrake uses to boot up with and install fedora core 4 again and overwrite mandrakes boot loader. Maybe then something may work.

[danleff 0]

OK, I just realized that I missed some information.

 

Your /boot partition is on hda3

Your /root partiton is on hda4

 

So in any other case, the grub lines should look like;

 

kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-6mdksmp root=/dev/hda4

initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd-2.6.11-mdksmp.img

 

However, I still have not been able to figure out the logical volume thing on Fedora.

 

My Fedora grub line for the kernel is;

 

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.1826.2.10_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/123 rhgb quiet

 

So the syntax is off as well. Things have changed!

 

Note the root=LABEL=/123.......

 

I have to figure this out.

 

I would reinstall Fedora with that bootloader. It should work.

 

To complicate matters, Fedora has not been able to run for the first time, so I wonder if the root system files are all there. I found that my /dev directory is empty, so no boot, as there are no references in /dev to identify the drive partitions. The /proc directory content is also nonexistant.

[wolvram 0]

I won't get another go* at this til thursday but the LABEL it's referring to may simply be the "Fedora" back splash screen when it's booting. The Mandrake 10.2 uses GRUB 0.95 and it's solely 80x25 text based. But when I checked out the mandrake line it had a line right after the root =/dev... (something). That (something) is me forgetting what the line looked like because the comp I'm doing this on is 50 miles away atm lol. But it was

kernel=/dev/... root=/dev/... (something)/xxx.img

Basically it was the file that is used for the image during boot, just the like the windows splash screen while its loading files after it finds which windows to load.

 

I dunno, it is really odd to have LABEL in there like that, especially between = signs.

 

EDIT- *

Odd I didn't think c.rac.k (without periods) would be asterisked out, I had to swap it out with "go" lol.