Strange Fedora Booting problem: can not mount "LABEL=*" partitions

[Guolin Cheng]

Hi, 

   Just got Fedora FC1 vanilla 2.4.25kernel+libata8patch booting problems, FC1 complains that it can not automatically find&found partitions specified with "LABEL=" in /etc/fstab, and then falls me into repair mode. In the repair mode I can mount it manually without any problems. More interesting are: 1) I have several partitions specified with "LABEL=*" in /etc/fstab, but FC1 always can not identify same partition even on different machines; 2) the default&upgraded ntpl kernel boots up without problems.  My fstab is attached below:

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/0                /0                      ext3    defaults        1 2
/dev/hdc1               /1                      ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/alexa            /alexa                  ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=/usr              /usr                    ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/var              /var                    ext3    defaults        1 2
/dev/hda7               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda6               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda8               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
ops-test1.alexa.com guolin 134%

 FC1 stops on partitions "LABEL=/var" on two machines, stops on partition "LABEL=/" on the 3rd machine. While the default|upgraded NTPL kernel (with SMP problem) boots without a glitch, my vanilla 2.4.25 kernel plus libata patch 2.4.25-libata8 fails with the above symptoms described.

 The solution to fix it is:  manually run "e2fsck -y -f  /dev/hd?, tune2fs -j /dev/hd?; e2label /dev/hd? <LABEL>" again even there is no problem with file system, journal node and ext2 label, then reboot. 
  
  SInce we have several hundreds of RH8 machines to upgrade to Fedora, we can not endure to fix booting problem one by one, So where is the problem? File system utilites? 2.4.25 kernel? or the libata patch? 

  The machines has Fedora Core 1 with all packages upgraded: util-linux-2.11y-29, e2fsprogs-1.34-1, 2.4.25+2.4.25-libata8. 

  The system disk's partitions were originally created under Redhat 8.0. This upgrade to FC1 is as simple as: booting the machines into a FC1 diskless mode, then create file system on existing /, /usr, /var partitions resides on system disk, label 3 partitions and and dump system tarballs onto them,  install lilo bootload onto system disk  and reboot. The simple&efficient way works great for years for us except this time. :(

  Any suggestions? and what's the difference between 2.4.25-libata8 patch and 2.4.25-libata16 (bleeding-edge) patches?


  Thanks a lot.

  --Guolin Cheng