From: Robert Scheck (scheck_at_etes.de)
Date: Fri Dec 21 2007 - 18:29:20 CET
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:29:20 +0100 From: Robert Scheck <scheck@etes.de> Message-ID: <20071221172920.GA25335@intranet.hq.stgt.etes.de> Subject: [suse-sles-e] Upgrade to SLES9 SP4 results in non-bootable systems when using SATA
Hello all,
today we upgraded a couple of servers having SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
Service Pack 3 to the recently released Service Pack 4. After rebooting the
first of them (because of the new Linux kernel), the machine didn't come up
by itself anymore.
When looking to it, I saw that the system it wasn't able to find its root
partition /dev/sda6 as configured. So during the initrd when the devices
are created and where the "waiting for /dev/XXX" is printed, the stuff
simply bailed out, displayed all available device files and I got a shell
prompt. There were no /dev/sda5 (swap) or /dev/sda6 (root) device files
available any longer as before (when stepping from SLES9 up to SP3).
When trying to get the system booting again, I just noticed that the device
files /dev/hdc5 and /dev/hdc6 were created, so I changed the grub config on
runtime before system start and retried - even with success. Of course, I
had to modify the /etc/fstab then as well for the swap partition. To ensure
that everything is really working, I did another reboot and the system came
up as expected, now.
Luckily it wasn't a mission critical system, but what the hell (and this is
really friendly said now) did you Novell respectively SuSE guys smoke or
drink before you prepared the Service Pack 4 - or asked otherwise: Why did
this slip even through quality assurance? Can you please do Enterprise and
not only write it in big letters to the boxes and media, you're shipping?!
Changing drivers for a new Service Pack is okay (at least from my point of
view) as long as it contains at least no regressions (!), but this case
definately was a regression which normally never should happen, right? Can
you please make sure, that you never change a driver within a Enterprise
release, that a SCSI-emulated device (SATA shown as /dev/sdX) just gets
finally displayed as an IDE device (/dev/hdX) from one Linux kernel update
to another? You can do such stuff from SLES 10 -> 11 or similar, but not
within a stable series; we're not on openSUSE Factory where everything can
break from one update to another!
As this machine only has a update-only subscription, I can't open a bug to
report (not without paying money that SuSE/Novell fixes its self-introduced
bugs) this stuff there. If maybe somebody of the technical guys of SuSE or
Novell cares about this problem, the relevant part of lspci output is just
below.
$ lspci -vvv
[...]
0000:00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO])
Subsystem: Dell PowerEdge SC1425
Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 0
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
Region 0: I/O ports at ccb8 [size=8]
Region 1: I/O ports at ccb0 [size=4]
Region 2: I/O ports at cca0 [size=8]
Region 3: I/O ports at cc98 [size=4]
Region 4: I/O ports at cc80 [size=16]
[...]
$
Maybe somebody can announce when /dev/hdc switches back to /dev/sda again,
so that I can do the relevant updates on-site to avoid further unnecessary
downtimes? It would be at least a very small christmas present after this
horrible non-Enterprise behaviour today.
Merry christmas
Robert Scheck
-- Robert Scheck Web: http://www.etes.de E-Mail: scheck@etes.de ETES GmbH Libanonstrasse 58 A D-70184 Stuttgart Fon: +49 (7 11) 48 90 83 - 12 Fax: +49 (7 11) 48 90 83 - 50 Registergericht: Amtsgericht Stuttgart HRB 721182 Geschäftsführende Gesellschafter: Markus Espenhain und Jan Theofel Sitz der Gesellschaft: Stuttgart USt.-Id.Nr.: DE814767446 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-sles-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-sles-e-help@suse.com
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