Question

Suse wont' boot in vmware anymore. errors with "Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,2)"vm

Asked by: brittonv

I just installed ESX4i on 2 IBM x3650 Servers.  I installed SuSE Enterprise Linux 9.3 on one server.

I installed the VMWare tools, then shut the VM Down and made some copies of the VM.  I made 4 copies.  I copied 2 to a identical server and and 2 on this one.

I installed WebSphere and DB2 on the 2 VM's in question.  Everything looked fine so I shut down the vm's and then powered down the server.  I then took them to the server room and installed them into a rack.  

Now the 2 installations that were natively installed won't boot. (Where I installed Websphere and DB2).  However the 2 untouched installation on the other identical server still boot

The boot process seems to go fine until:

 RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0

VFS: Cannot open root device "802" or unknown-block(8,2)

Please append a correct "root=" boot option

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,2)

Now I copied the one of the failed VM's to the ESXi 4.0 server that was still working.  However it failed exactly the same, so it isn't the hardware.

Can someone please tell me what I am supposed to do now!

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Asked On
2009-08-08 at 02:22:54ID24636749
Topics

VMware

,

Linux

,

SuSE Linux

Participating Experts
2
Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-08 at 03:21:12ID: 25049111

After you installed  WebSphere and DB2 on the 2 VM's in question did you restart the VMs? just to comfirm they can boot correctly

 

by: brittonvPosted on 2009-08-08 at 07:49:21ID: 25050074

no I did not.  

But I really don't see how installing applications like that can affect Hard Drive errors.

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-08 at 08:36:11ID: 25050536

yeah i know just asking...strange issue
well since you have copies perharps you should make another copy and try reinstall WebSphere and DB2 and reboot

 

by: ShineOnPosted on 2009-08-09 at 14:03:32ID: 25055960

Do you get as far as the boot menu or is this before the boot menu shows up?

 

by: ShineOnPosted on 2009-08-09 at 14:24:05ID: 25056042

By the way - are you using SLES9 because of software support requirements or just because you happened to have it laying around?  

I ask because SLES9 is nearing EOL (GS ends in 2011, self support in 2014), SLES10 has been out for a few years already, and SLES11 is out (and works really well in a VMware ESX environment).

SLES9 was Novell's first shot at a SuSE release, besides.  10 worked out several of the issues 9 had, and 11 fixed most of the issues they introduced with 10 with their various attempts at improving YaST and RPM support, and has the full benefit of the OpenSuSE community development project.  I believe it to be the best SuSE release yet.

That said, if you have to be on SLES9, it might be a good idea to look into updating from SP3 to SP4 at least.

 

by: brittonvPosted on 2009-08-15 at 14:25:44ID: 25106973

I verified that this is actually a defect in VMWare. Basically VMware tools corrupts the initrd.img

I reinstalled 3.5 and will up grade to 4 when it is ready for production.

 

by: ShineOnPosted on 2009-08-15 at 16:45:26ID: 25107332

Good to know.  I will hold off on upgrading to 4 now.  Thanks!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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