kernel does not boot after root on LVM install on powermac b/w G3

[Jamie Strandboge]

This seems to be upstream bug http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11943

PowerMAC G3 400MHz B/W with 256MB of RAM fails to boot after installation.

Basically, the installer works fine (alternate CD, cli-install). Then you reboot and the boot stops with the hard drive churning with the last message as:
scsi0 : MESH

If you leave the computer in this state long enough, it starts spewing output from /sys/devices/.../ide1/1.0/block/hdc*. ide1/hdc is where my Ubuntu installation is (ide0 has a zip drive and CDrom that I disconnected due to ide-gd complaining about 'No disk in drive' and 'ATAPI reset complete'.

I don't see other errors as in the upstream report. The attached files are from after booting into rescue mode. I tried blacklisting 'mesh' and removing mesh.ko from the initramfs and filesystem, but still get the same error. irqpoll has no effect. I also installed the Hardy kernel and it suffers from the same problem. I also tried with the latest 2.6.28-4.10 kernel and it still fails to boot.

The system ran OS X fine up until yesterday, when I tried to install Ubuntu, so it should not be hardware failure.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

Actually, this may not be the upstream bug (but still could be). I looked at the dmesg and had a hunch that it might be lvm. So I reinstalled without LVM and now it boots (yea). The working partition table is:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/hdc
/dev/hdc
        # type name length base ( size ) system
/dev/hdc1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hdc2 Apple_Bootstrap untitled 1954 @ 64 (977.0k) NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hdc3 Apple_Bootstrap boot 500001 @ 2018 (244.1M) NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hdc4 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root 6835938 @ 502019 ( 3.3G) Linux native
/dev/hdc5 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 1000001 @ 7337957 (488.3M) Linux swap
/dev/hdc6 Apple_Free Extra 20998874 @ 8337958 ( 10.0G) Free space

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=29336832
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

$ df | grep hdc
/dev/hdc4 3364236 521580 2671760 17% /
/dev/hdc3 234297 15852 205945 8% /boot

When it was failing, /dev/hdc4 was an LVM partition that took the rest of the disk, then inside of it I had two LVs: root (ext3 at 3.5GB) and swap (at 512MB).

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

Could you wait till a new install CD is produced with the 2.6.28-4 powerpc kernel? This will likely pop up on cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports in the next couple of days. Please don't use the most current one, since there is a kernel mismatch between d-i and the kernel packages on the CD.

If you could then try the latest CD with LVM and report back if you have any issues, that would be great. I have an idea of what the problem is, but I want to see if a new kernel fixes the problem first.

Thanks

Luke

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

I tried daily/20090310.1/jaunty-alternate-powerpc.iso and it told me that 'No kernel modules' were found. Was this the one you were referring to?

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

No it wasn't, you can either download a netboot ISO from ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/jaunty/main/installer-powerpc/images/powerpc or wait till a new daily is built.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

I filed a bug #341420 against daily/20090310.1.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

I am no longer seeing this problem with 20090318. Marking Fix Released.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

This was not the upstream bug after all.