Cannot reboot after RHEL4 install

[Tim Medford]

Bizarre problem after a fresh install of RedHat ES v4 on a Proliant DL360 G3. The server has a smart array 5i, configured for Raid 0+1. There are 2 73gb drives.

Everything went perfectly during the installation until the reboot time came. It starts rebooting just fine, seems to find the kernel and begin loading. Then messages appear:

Red Hat nash starting.

lpfc 0000:01:01:0 0:442 Adaptor failed to init mbxCmd x88 CONFIG_PORTus x12 Data: x0

lpfc 0000:01:01:0 0:442 Adaptor failed to init mbxCmd x88 CONFIG_PORTus x12 Data: x0

File Descriptor 3 left open
Reading all physical volumes

File Descriptor 3 left open
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found

File Descriptor 3 left open
/dev/VolGroup00 : opendir failed: no such file or directory.

Mount error 6 mounting ext3
Mount error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed :22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
kernel panic - not syncing : attempted to kill init!


If I then boot from CD1 and do a linux rescue everything looks ok. grub.conf is setup right, etc..

What's really odd is that when I exit from the rescue shell, pop out the CD, then the whole system comes up just fine!! But if I do another restart I'll get those same errors again.

If you have any ideas please let me know.

Thanks, Tim

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Tim,

Mystery here.

I believe that there may be a compatability problem between the OS and the version of Smartarray software built into the server.

You may need to upgrade machine bios/rom and such.

Further, you may need to back this system up and redo the storage by booting off the CD that shipped with the server(it is downloadable) and seting up storage again.

SEP

[Sung Oh]

Hi Tim,

lpfc 0000:01:01:0 0:442 Adaptor failed to init mbxCmd x88 CONFIG_PORTus x12 Data: x0
lpfc is emulex device and it is failing for "Adapter initialization failed when issuing a CONFIG_PORT mailbox command."

Most likely it is a hardware or firmware issue and you might be able to solve this issue by updating the firmware of emulex card.

Regards,
Sung

[Sung Oh]

also, consider this docs.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~aloftus/FibreChannel/Emulex/configuration_options.pdf

Try to using lpfcdd and if still does not work, try to use Emulex driver from Emulex support web site.

Regards,
Sung

[Tim Medford]

The problem boiled down to those missing LPFC drivers. They are for that emulex fibre card in the server.

I didn't need to the card so I popped it out. The next time I booted Kudzu prompted me about the missing hardware, and I told it to go ahead and remove the config.

It has worked perfectly since! I supposed I could have found emulex drivers and that would have fixed it as well.

Thanks,
Tim