FC4 --> FC5 need yaboot, OF help

[Mike Hammill]

Hello all,

After upgrading FC4 to FC5, I have not been able to successfully  
reboot yet.  The problem is a messed up yaboot.conf, I think.  I  
could use some help and or advice on that.  Specifically, can I  
specify at yaboot's "boot:" prompt (or perhaps it's OpenFirmware's)  
an "init=" ?  And if so, how?

Background:

I've been running FC4 for quite a while on a Mac G3 (Blue and  
White).  Really nice.  I decided to take the plunge and do the  
upgrade to FC5.  Since this old Mac has a DVD, I used the FC5 DVD.   
The upgrade appeared to go fine, but when I reboot, I get:

Welcome
Welcome to yaboot version 1.3.13 (Red Hat 1.3.13-0.18)
boot:
Please wait, loading kernel...
:3,/vmlinux: Unable to open file, Invalid device
boot:

Using an old Gentoo 2004.3 CD I investigated further and found the  
old FC4 kernels were removed from /dev/hda3 (my /boot) just as they  
probably should have been, since it was getting full anyway.  The  
files in there now include vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 and a  
corresponding initrd file.  So, I rebooted, ended up at the same  
boot: prompt shown above and tried a number of things, firstly:

boot: hd:3,/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5

This enters me into the kernel, shows it recognizes the HD with stuff  
like:
hda: [mac] hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
but then hits:
EXT2-fs warning (device hda3): ext2_fill_super: mounting ext3  
filesystem as ext2
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 flesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 196k init
Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option  
to kernel.
Call Trace:
...
<0> Rebooting after xxx seconds...

Since my entire FC4 installation--outside of /boot--was under LVM  
(and possibly reiserfs, don't recall), my first reaction is that the  
above Kernel needs an initrd file to help it get the LVM/reiserfs  
stuff right.  So, I tried:

boot: hd:3,/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 init="/ 
initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img"
boot: hd:3,/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 init=/initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
boot: hd:3,/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 init=initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
boot: hd:3,/initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img

None of these worked.  I got messages like "Failed to execute  
initrd-..... Attempting defaults...".

As you can see, I'm struggling with things I don't totally understand  
here (probably why I am not succeeding!)  First off, I'm not sure  
exactly what initrd's really do.  Second, I'm not sure not having one  
is really the problem; it could be that odd message about the  
console.  Finally, even if I'm barking up the right tree, I don't  
know how to make OpenFirmware/yaboot do the right thing.

Help or advice appreciated.

PS  I don't have the yaboot.conf installed by the FC5 DVD in front of  
me, but as I remember is didn't include much more than a boot=/dev/ 
hda2 and partition=3 in it.

/Mike