Waiting for /dev/sda2 to appear

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

On one of my desktops I’m able to boot with Tumbleweed’s 3.9.0-6 kernel, but not with the more recent 3.9.1 or 3.9.2 versions.
The boot hangs waiting for the partitions to appear.
I’m using grub (not grub2)
I’ve checked that

  • nothing changes if I use the partition’s uuid instead of /dev/sda2 in grub/menu.lst
  • the 3.9.0 and 3.9.2 initrds contain the same set of modules.
  • nothing changes if I add pata_jmicron to INITRD_MODULES

I’m attaching below the output of lspci. Any hint?

Thanks,

Marco

00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 13)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev 13)
00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management Registers (rev 13)
00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch Pad Registers (rev 13)
00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS Registers (rev 13)
00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (rev 13)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 1
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 5
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller #1
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller #2
01:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 91a3 (rev 11)
02:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF114 [GeForce GTX 560 Ti] (rev a1)
03:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF114 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
05:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362 SATA Controller (rev 10)
07:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
07:02.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)] IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev c0)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-Core Registers (rev 05)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 05)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QPI Link 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QPI Physical 0 (rev 05)
ff:03.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller (rev 05)
ff:03.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Target Address Decoder (rev 05)
ff:03.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Test Registers (rev 05)
ff:04.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Control Registers (rev 05)
ff:04.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Address Registers (rev 05)
ff:04.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Rank Registers (rev 05)
ff:04.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Thermal Control Registers (rev 05)
ff:05.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Control Registers (rev 05)
ff:05.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Address Registers (rev 05)
ff:05.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Rank Registers (rev 05)
ff:05.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Thermal Control Registers (rev 05)
ff:06.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Control Registers (rev 05)
ff:06.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Address Registers (rev 05)
ff:06.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Rank Registers (rev 05)
ff:06.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Thermal Control Registers (rev 05)

#2

Solved by brute-force: I’ve added all the modules of
/lib/modules/kernel_version/kernel/drivers/ata to INITRD_MODULES .
This brought me back to bootland. Then I tried to rmmod all of them.
The used one (ata_piix) was what I actually needed.

Is there a smarter way of proceeding?

#3

The ‘lspci’ command can produce moe verbose output, including the chipset

/sbin/lspci -nn

For example, I my SATA controller is reported like this

00:1f.2 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [IDE mode] [8086:2828] (rev 03)

Running one of the following would have confirmed that the ‘ata_piix’ module was loaded for this hardware

/sbin/lspci -nnk

/sbin/lspci -vv

but if it wasn’t, my next stop might have been to check modules.alias in /lib/modules/uname -r/ directory, using the chipset product ID eg

grep -i 2828 modules.alias
alias pci:v00008086d00002828sv*sd*bc*sc*i* ata_piix
alias pci:v00008086d00002828sv0000106Bsd000000A3bc*sc*i* ata_piix
alias pci:v00008086d00002828sv0000106Bsd000000A1bc*sc*i* ata_piix
alias pci:v00008086d00002828sv0000106Bsd000000A0bc*sc*i* ata_piix