panic after rsync

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, Mike Pepe wrote:

>
>
> dsavage at peaknet.net wrote:
>> The 48G hard drive in my Thinkpad is throwing smartd errors, so I'm trying
>> to migrate my existing FC4 installation to one of those new 120G Seagate
>> Momentus drives. The difference between their sizes is giving me fits. I
>> tried prepping the new drive with LVM2 before running rsync, but I
>> couldn't mount its partitions with a temp USB2 connect because FC4
>> apparently can't handle two drives using identical lvm names.

Not surprising, if you think about it.  So give the new volgroup a 
different name for now.  Then you can change it back after you remove the 
old drive.

I just went through this, and it worked fine for me.  The LVM HOWTO is 
extremely helpful in this regard.

>> 
>> Since all I need are the /boot, / and swap partitions I gave up on lvm and
>> tried the old fashioned way: /dev/hda1-3. The trouble is, when I rsync
>> everything over from the old to the new drive, some lvm contamination
>> seems to migrate along with my files.

I doubt it's LVM "migrating". rsync knows nothing of LVMs.

>> 
>> While booted with the Rescue CD I've:
>>  (1) Re-labeled the / and /boot partitions
>>  (2) Edited /etc/fstab to match the new disk's LABLELs
>>  (3) Run mkinitrd with "--omit-lvm-modules"
>>  (4) Re-run grub-install
>> 
>> Now the new disk boots thru grub, then panics after:
>>   Red Hat nash version 4.2.15 starting
>>   ERROR opening /dev/console!!!!: 2
>>   error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 0
>>   error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 1
>>   error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 2
>>   WARNING: can't access (null)
>>   exec of init ((nul)) failed!!!: 14
>>   Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
>> 
>> Can anyone offer any insights into what is causing this and what needs
>> fixing? Thanks.
>> 
>> --Doc Savage
>>   Fairview Heights, IL
>>

Mike Pepe could be right.  If you didn't leave out the pseudo-file systems 
(dev, proc, selinux (I think), sys, when you copied, you might see odd 
behavior.

Also, check to see that you preserved symlinks when you copied. 
/etc/grub.conf, e.g., should be a symlink to /boot/grub/grub.conf.

>
> I'm not sure this is the root cause of your issue, but if I were doing what 
> you are doing, I'd be using dump/restore or tar, not rsync.
>
> Maybe it's not copying your data correctly... dump and restore would probably 
> be my first choice, as they read and restore on the filesystem level where 
> the other solutions can cross mountpoints.
>
> just a thought...

There are other ways to avoid crossing filesystem boundaries.  The LVM 
HOWTO suggests using find (which can be told not to cross filesystems) and 
cpio.  That worked fine for me.

>
> -Mike
>
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs