boot problems - initrd

Hello,

After forgetting my root password and trying to boot into single user mode under Red Hat 7.2 Pro (boxed retail set) I have run into a kernel panic. In grub I edited the boot commands to include "kernel /boot/.... single". Immediately after doing this the system failed to boot with the error message "kernel panic: no init found. Try passing init= to kernel". (Previously the machine had run just fine and had been up for over 150 days). After the first failure I tried adding any combination of "single", "-single", "s", and "-s" I could think of, and changed their position in the command (first/last parameter, appended "single" to other commands including initrd line). Nothing could get me into single user mode, I never got past the kernel panic. I also tried passing init= as a kernel argument with the path listed on the "initrd" command. I eventfully booted to rescue mode from a RH 7.2 install disk and got my password changed. However, I am still unable to boot from the hard drives. (In a software RAID 1 config)

My grub.conf file contains the following:
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/sda1
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img

( I set the file back to exactly how it looked when I started, any changes I made were always lost after having to reboot)


Also of interest is an error that occurred just before the kernel panic. It read "pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initd) failed:2". Does anyone know what the "2" error code indicates? I cannot find this anywhere in any documentation of pivot_root. It seems to be a rather obscure function in the first place. 

>From research I have done online, I have found other posts mentioning this exact problem. However, none of them have any solutions. It was suggested that this may be due to file system corruption. I doubt this is the case as I can mount my software RAID 1 drives from rescue mode and read/write all the files just fine. Everything seems to be intact. I have not run fsck but I will do that ASAP.

I have gotten my hands on the latest RH 8.0 ISOs. Could upgrading from 7.2 to 8.0 cure my woes? Would this just preserve the hardware/device misconfiguration? 

My problem looks to described in more detail in this post: https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/valhalla-list/2003-January/thread.html#23350
and here: http://lists.ethernal.org/cantlug-0208/msg00472.html
and here: http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/mail-archives/lfs-support/2003/02/0018.html
and here: http://www.gollatz.net/troubleshooting

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
        Jeremy




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Jeremy Booker - Owner / Webmaster
JTech Web Systems
www.JTechWebSystems.com
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