I have loaded openSuSE 11.4 on an IBM x3400 box with an Adaptec ServeRAID 8k-l SAS harddisk adapter. (openSuSE 11.1 was previously loaded on this box and was using XEN kernels.)
The default “desktop” kernel boots and operates correctly. I use this machine to run other XEN virtual machines to run different versions or our companies printer controller application.
When I attempt to boot the xen kernel, the kernel cannot locate the root partition (or any other partition) on the hard disk. Here are a few lines of kernel output:
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0.539048] AAC0: adapter kernel panic’d ffffffff
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Trying manual resume from /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_0_29430D20-part1
Trying manual resume from /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_0_29430D20-part1
Waiting for device /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_0_29430D20-part2 to appear: …Could not find /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_0_29430D20-part2
(part1 is swap, part2 is root)
Again, the non-xen “Desktop” kernel boots without error.
The xen kernel initrd does not have the RAID module.
The Xen kernel needs a driver update or needs to add the aacraid module to a new initrd for the xen kernel…
I have not solved my problem. I went the route of multiple boots to run my other OS’s.
The problem is clearly that the xen kernel configuration (with its associated initrd) is different that the non-xen kernel and is lacking the RAID controller driver. We’ll need to become educated on re-building a xen kernel to get it to work.