Upgrading to Red Hat 8.0

[haystacs]

Has anyone had a problem upgrading from Red Hat 7.3 to 8.0? I downloaded the iso from Red Hat’s site and then burned the iso’s to disc. I complete the installation without a problem but when I go to boot my system just hangs. Could the iso’s be corrupt? Should I just purchase a copy of the software.

[xwarlok82x]

It could be something goofy with your hardware, but i doubt that since 7.3 was working on your system before.

Its possible that they were bad iso's, i've just experienced this myself in the past 24hrs and am having to download them again.

If you still have the iso's on hand on another hard drive, go to linuxiso.org and get a prog to check the md5sum's its possible this is the problem.

good luck.

[haystacs]

I did run the checks and the ISO's are OK. I am hesistant to try it again... I lost all my data the first time!

[DMR]

Are you sure you burned the iso file as disk images (as opposed to just copying the files to CD)?

Where in the boot process does the system hang?

[kevinalm]

Upgrading from one version of rh to another dosn't seem to work very well, at least in my experience. To many things wind up broken. I'd recommend backing up anything you want to keep (hopefully you've already done that) and doing a fresh install of rh 8.0.

[haystacs]

Thanks for the advice but I have already tried installing fresh with negative results. Everything installs successfully but the computer hangs on the first boot.

[kevinalm]

Do you get any error messages at all? Also, can you describe where exactly in the boot process it hangs? I think we need more info here.

[haystacs]

Sorry for not getting back to you right away but I was away for work.

I am not getting an error but the system hangs at the following line during boot:

INIT: version 2.84 booting

Does this look familiar?

[kevinalm]

Hmm,

You're actually getting pretty far into the boot process then. That's where SysVInit starts. (all the green "OK's").

How do you have your partitions setup? Possibly something isn't being found.

What's supposed to appear next is "Red Hat 8.0" or something similar, followed by fs checks, remounting in rw mode and services starting up.

[haystacs]

I have two seperate hard drives. One with Windows XP and the second with Red Hat. I use grub for the boot loader. I did find this through a google search:

root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=Label=/ hdd=ide-scsi apm=idle_threshold=100
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img


I need to update my boot option with this information. How can I update this information if I can't boot?

Thanks,

Andrew

[DMR]

A couple of things:

1. What did you find that makes you think that applying those changes to your grub.conf will help your boot problem?

2. If you choose to add the information to grub.conf, don't add what you've posted verbatim; it isn't correct for your system. The "root (hd0,1)" entry is telling grub that the Linux kernel can be found on the second partition of the first drive. Since you said that Linux is installed on your second drive, you'll have to edit the "root" to reflect the correct location on your particular system.

3. The first installation CD can also serve as a rescue disk; boot from it and choose "rescue mode". It will detect the Linux installation on you hard drive, mount it under /mnt/sysimage, and drop you to a command prompt. At the prompt, type the following:

chroot /mnt/sysimage

You should then be able edit your files and perform other troubleshooting procedures.

Read Redhat's online documentaiton carefully,as it describes some possile measures to take when a system hangs at bootup.

[haystacs]

The only reason I thought that might work because I found a site stating that was the correct fix. Adding amp=idle_threshold=100.

Anyway, I did not find any information on Red Hat's site. I did take a look at grub and this is what I have:

#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
password=
titile Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14)
root (hd1,0)
kernal /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=label= /hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-14.img

title Windows XP
root noverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


Does this look right?

[kevinalm]

I'm wondering about the line:

kernal /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=label=/ hdd=ide-scsi

root=label=/ has been causing problems for some people.

Try

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=hdb hdd=ide-scsi

I presume your linux drive is slave on primary ide.

By the way, there is a typo in your post of that line, the space should be after the / not before. I'm guessing that isn't how it is in your grub.conf, but you should check.

Also, you might want to verify the locations of vmlinuz and initrd.img. I thought the standard location was in /boot. The automatic power management line might be worth a try too.

[haystacs]

I tried putting that line but it didn't work. When I went to change it back teh line was showing as follows:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=hdb=/ hdd=ide-scsi

Is it supposed to look like that? And again I do thank you for all your help.

Andrew

[kevinalm]

Try editing

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=hdb=/ hdd=ide-scsi

down to

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=hdb hdd=ide-scsi

again.

root=label=/ is the default at install and is supposed to work, but I have heard it has caused some problems.

Personally, I prefer just root=hdb.

Have you checked for the actuall locations of vmlinuz-2.4.18-14
and inird-2.4.18-14.img? This problem is sort of strange because of how far you're getting into the boot.

ps Just thought of something. How exactly did you partition during install? You may need to use root=hdb1 (or 2, etc.)