Upgrading from 2.4.27 to 2.6.11 on Debian

If you’re upgrading from a 2.4 series kernel to a 2.6 series kernel and you have SATA drives, beware!
The two kernels are not alike in accessing these devices. In the 2.6 kernel, they moved from using /dev/hd[a-z] to /dev/sd[a-z] for Serial ATA (SATA) drives. After you apt-get install you kernel, make sure you edit 2 files or you will be in trouble.

First, edit /etc/fstab

Change all of your SATA drives from hd[a-z] to sd[a-z]. Make sure you only do this to your Hard Drives, and not to you CDRom Drives. The only thing that has changed is the first letter ‘h’ to ’s’. Don’t worry about the rest, it has remained the same.

After solving problem with VSF and root partition, you must edit Grub’s boot loader config or you will get this error….

pivot_root: No such file or directory
/sbin/init: 426:cannot open /dev/console: No such file
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

So, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Change all the hd[a-z] to sd[a-z]

That’s it! you’re all done. Reboot and select the new kernel.

Here is my grub menu.lst
…

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.11-1-686
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1-686 root=/dev/sda2 ro
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.11-1-686
savedefault
boot
...

Notice the change from hda2 to sda2

add to del.icio.us    add to technorati favs    email this

Posted in HOWTO |