Re: Fedora 6 restore snafu

It's an LVM volume built on top of hardware RAID, and yes, I've gone
over the combination of fstab, grub.conf and the volume labels that make
restoring Linux systems such a pleasure. I'm really pretty sure that
they're all OK, but I need to inspect the initrd file.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. I can certainly reformat the hard
drive. It's pretty darn simple:
- primary 100 MB partition (/boot)
- primary 60 GB partition (LVM)
- VolGroup00/LogVol00 59.8 GB (/)
- VolGroup00/LogVol01 2 MB (swap)

The real gotcha here is that although I can boot from the rescue disk
and mount the file system, I can't do any of the following successfully:
- run 'chroot /mnt/sysimage'
- run mkinitrd
- mount the initrd to a loop device for inspection (now that I think of
it, this failure may also point to a corrupt FS)

What I can do while booted from the CD is run grub and edit files

Both my particular boot error, and the chroot failure have been reported
on a couple of sites, but no one claims to have solved them.

Thanks, PM

Jonathan Loran wrote:
>
> I'm going to take a shot in the dark here. Given that your fsck found
> errors, you're having trouble finding /bin/sh (other files?) and that
> you most likely have the correct info in grub.conf (though you should
> quadruple check that), I'll bet your disk label is corrupted, and you
> have overlapping partitions. How big is your boot disk? If it's upon
> a RAID volume larger than 1TB you may need to partition with parted.
> You may want to give parted a try anyway. It's more feature rich than
> fdisk, and can adjust errors, though you should really recopy your
> data if you find any.
>
> My 2c
>
> Jon
>
> Paul Mackinney wrote:
>> I'm hoping a seasoned Fedora Linux sysadmin has seen this before and
>> knows the path. I've Googled extensively & found several reports of
>> the same problem, but no solution. I have backed up & restored many
>> Fedora systems. I've had to deal with LVM UUID differences,
>> reinstalling grub, etc, but this one is kicking my butt.
>>
>> My situation: I have a backup of a Fedora 6 system that I'm trying to
>> restore to the same system it came from. It attempts to boot, but
>> stalls with the message "can't find init (/sbin/init)".
>> When I edit the grub line and add the boot command "init = /bin/sh",
>> I get a very similar error complaining that it cant find init (/bin/sh).
>>
>> This is all very similar to this post, which remains unsolved:
>> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/fedora-35/cant-clone-fc6-using-tar-backup-and-restore-506424/
>>
>>
>> What I've done:
>> 1. Verify the listings in grub.conf and fstab are all correct.
>> 2. Resinstall grub.
>> 3. Disable selinux. Did that via /etc/selinux/config. I also touched
>> an .autorelabel file in the root of the hard drive.
>> 4. Run fsck. It found & fixed some errors, no change in behavior.
>>
>> What I can't do:
>> 5. Rebuild the initrd. Can't, because when I run in linux rescue
>> mode, the "chroot /mnt/sysimage" command fails with the message
>> "can't find /bin/sh". Without chrooting, I can't get mkinitrd to
>> work, and I can't even get the initrd mounted on a loop device to
>> inspect it. (I'm doing this on another computer now.) I note that
>> this problem is superficially similar to the problem booting in the
>> first place...
>>
>> TIA. Paul
>>
>>
>

-- 
Paul Mackinney
2111ABC Etcheverry Hall
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740
510/643-0106
mackinney_at_berkeley.edu
--
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken 
joy in creative expression and knowledge. 
        --Albert Einstein
 
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