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

[Nigel Wade]

Guolin Cheng wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
>

I think you need to set BSD disklabel support in the Partition Types section 
of the kernel config.

Didn't you use a RH config as the starting point?


-- 
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
             University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail :    nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Phone :     +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555