kernel panic on a 2950

[Chamberland, Robert]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David_Kewley at Dell.com [mailto:David_Kewley at Dell.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:52 PM
> To: Chamberland, Robert
> Cc: linux-poweredge at lists.us.dell.com
> Subject: RE: kernel panic on a 2950
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com [mailto:linux-poweredge-
> > bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Kaj Niemi
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:21 AM
> >
> > On May 13, 2008, at 20:31, Chamberland, Robert wrote:
> >
> > > Just before the RHEL rescue disk kicks in the controller correctly
> > > reports seeing two logical drives.
> > > The rescue disk reports not seeing the drives and asks if I want
to
> > > install drivers for them (which I skip).
> >
> > Did you, by any chance, happen to boot with another kernel than the
> > one you were running before rebooting? If the VDs aren't seen it
could
> > be that the initrd image does not contain the necessary drivers to
> > talk with the card; this usually means mkinitrd got hosed when
> > installing the new kernel.
> 
> Following up on Kaj's idea:
> 
> If you have an original 2950, the built-in RAID controller is PERC
5/i,
> and its driver is megaraid_sas.  You need a line like this in
> /etc/modprobe.conf:
> 
> alias scsi_hostadapter megaraid_sas
> 
> (If you have other scsi_hostadapter* lines, it might need to be
> scsi_hostadapterN, where N is 1, 2, 3, 4,...)
> 
> Is it possible this line got removed when you were messing with NIC
> configs?  If so, and if you manually or automatically updated your
> initrd (automatic update could happen via a kernel or kernel module
rpm
> install/update), then the new initrd would not have the driver.  When
a
> boot is attempted using this initrd, it would not be able to locate
your
> hardware RAID, which means it could not access /.  This would match
your
> original kernel panic symptoms.
> 
> Do you have another kernel in GRUB that you can boot into?  Maybe its
> initrd has the necessary drivers.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> David Kewley


You and Kaj are onto something.  No, I didn't load a new kernel and
don't have options for another kernel but /etc/modprobe.conf isn't
loading megaraid_sas.

This is the modprobe.conf from my good machine:

alias scsi_hostadapter megaraid_sas
alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd
alias scsi_hostadapter0 mptsas
alias scsi_hostadapter0 mptsas
alias scsi_hostadapter0 mptsas
alias scsi_hostadapter0 mptsas
alias eth2 e1000
alias eth3 e1000
alias eth0 bnx2
alias eth1 bnx2

This is from my bad machine:

alias eth2 e1000
alias eth3 e1000
alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd
alias eth1 bnx2
alias eth0 bnx2

And when I was messing with ifconfig my changes weren't taking, which is
probably interesting in this context...hrm.

So would the solution be to simply use the modprobe.conf from the good
machine?

Rob C