Kernel PANIC: pivot_root fails on boot

[Rick Stevens]

Robert Locke wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 19:23, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> 
>>Am Di, den 03.08.2004 schrieb Bert Buckley - Uniq Software/Systems um
>>1:23:
>>
>>
>>>I am running Fedora Core 1.  I recently had the system crash,
>>>which is of course most unusual.  After the crash, I cannot reboot,
>>>even though the file systems are clean.
>>>
>>>Some details:
>>>
>>>Error on attempted boot:
>>>
>>>	pivot_root: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
>>>
>>>Last successful command before failure:
>>>
>>>	kjournald...Commit 5 secs
>>>	EXT3-fs mounted with ordered data mode.
>>
>>>Bert
>>
>>Be sure /initrd directory exists with following permissions:
>>
>>$ ls -ld /initrd/
>>drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096  7. Okt 2003  /initrd/
>>
>>Alexander
>>
>>P.S. Update to latest FC1 kernel .2197.
> 
> 
> Usually a "pivot_root" is the transition from the initrd over to the
> real root file system as specified on the kernel line in the grub.conf,
> or maybe I am assuming you are later in the boot process....
> 
> So, what does the kernel line inside your grub.conf look like?
> 
> kernel /vmlinuz-<kernel version> ro root=LABEL=/
> 
> You might want to consider changing the end of the line to not use a
> LABEL since it is trying to read that from inside the superblock...
> 
> Try,
> 
> kernel /vmlinuz-<kernel version> ro root=/dev/hdxn
> 
> where /dev/hdxn is the partition your "/" file system is on (perhaps,
> something like /dev/hda2 or something along those lines).  You can even
> try doing it from within the grub splash screen by choosing "a" or "e"
> when GRUB first comes up to see if it works.  Remember that what you do
> with "a" or "e" inside of grub is temporary and only affects the version
> of grub.conf in "memory" not on disk.
> 
> If that fixes your booting, you can try to fix the label by using the
> "e2label" command.... or you can edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to make the
> change permanent...

And a common issue here is that the root filesystem is ext3 and they
either don't have an initrd at all or the initrd doesn't include the
ext3 module.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-         "OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't TOUCH anything!"         -
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