[Mageia-dev] Interesting issue after kernel update (Error 18)

[Michel Catudal]

After a reboot the I get an Error 18 message telling me that the Selected Cylinder exceeds the maximum supported by the bios.
I then assumed that the new kernel must be crap and tried to use the previous kernel and got the same error message.

My system is a bit odd that the bios sees the drives in the wrong order.

I have 3 2TB drives, The first 2 drives have Linux stuff installed and the 3rd drive has eComStation (OS/2) seen as HPFS/NTFS under Linux.
The bios as showned by my bootloader sees it as drive 0-2-1 instead 0f 0-1-2. Grub sees it the same way, but linux sees it in the correct order.

Mageia is installed on the second drive as you can see, correctly identified as sdb

[root at localhost grub]# df
Sys. de fichiers    Taille  Uti. Disp. Uti% Monté sur
/dev/sdb9             493G  326G  142G  70% /
/dev/sdb3             136M   43M   86M  34% /boot
/dev/sdb10            354G   27G  310G   8% /home/michel/vm_files

What I found was that the installer of the new kernel scrapped my menu.lst file, I fixed it with an editor while booted on Scientific Linux.
This may explain why when I installed Mageia that grub would not work and I had to set grub correctly.
To get Mageia to work after the installation I had to first boot on Scientific Linux, I added a boot block in SL6 menu.lst and booted on Mageia
I then fixed menu.lst and rebooted, everything was cool then. When I updated the kernel it messed up and I could no longer boot on Mageia.
I must have forgotten as I got burned by the same screw up this morning.

Here is the content of the menu.lst file prior to the upgrade followed by the one after the upgrade, notice that the installer changed the drive information by mistake. It didn't change the boot for Centos and Scientific Linux.

I would think that there should be a way for the Mageia installer (and grub) to know when what the bios thinks and what is real match.
As to why the bios gets the wrong order of the drives, I am not sure. Maybe it has a hard time with the OS/2 partitions. I had similar issues when I put a vista drive of a friend in my computer. her Dell was shot and I had to recover tons of pictures for her.

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timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
default 0

title 2.6.38.8-server-8.mga
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-8.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-8.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 selinux=0 vga=788
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-8.mga.img

title 2.6.38.8-server-6.mga
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-6.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 vga=788
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga.img

title linux
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 selinux=0 vga=788
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a failsafe
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd.img

title 2.6.38.7-server-1.mga
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.7-server-1.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.7-server-1.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd-2.6.38.7-server-1.mga.img

title 2.6.38.8-server-6.mga
kernel (hd2,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-6.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd2,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga.img

title Centos Linux (2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64)
     root (hd2,1)
     kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=66b960ab-2013-4e86-9ea0-b9d94618394c rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=cf  rhgb selinux=0 crashkernel=auto 
nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau vga=0x37D
     initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64.img

title Scientific Linux (2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64)
     root (hd2,0)
     kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=6acb0018-50dc-4e19-8035-cc3e68c05d83 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=cf nomodeset crashkernel=128M rhgb quiet selinux=0 
nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau
     initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64.img
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timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
default 0

title 2.6.38.8-server-8.mga
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-8.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-8.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 selinux=0 vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-8.mga.img

title 2.6.38.8-server-6.mga
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-6.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga.img

title linux
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 selinux=0 vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a failsafe
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd.img

title 2.6.38.7-server-1.mga
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.7-server-1.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.7-server-1.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd-2.6.38.7-server-1.mga.img

title 2.6.38.8-server-6.mga
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-6.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-6.mga.img

title Centos Linux (2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64)
     root (hd2,1)
     kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=66b960ab-2013-4e86-9ea0-b9d94618394c rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=cf  rhgb selinux=0 crashkernel=auto 
nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau vga=0x37D
     initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-131.12.1.el6.x86_64.img


title Scientific Linux (2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64)
     root (hd2,0)
     kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=6acb0018-50dc-4e19-8035-cc3e68c05d83 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=cf nomodeset crashkernel=128M rhgb quiet selinux=0 
nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau
     initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64.img

title 2.6.38.8-server-9.mga
kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-server-9.mga BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.38.8-server-9.mga root=UUID=69fa904e-c5d1-461d-851f-4b8f5c3fae6a nokmsboot resume=UUID=0ca4e00e-69be-4824-be88-f457951aa974 splash=0 selinux=0 vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/initrd-2.6.38.8-server-9.mga.img


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