Il 27/04/2012 20:21, Dennis Gallien ha scritto:

On Friday, April 27, 2012 12:45 PM claudioml@mediaservice.net wrote:

...

Hello all,

I have a problem with an upgrade, from OpenSuSE 11.3 to 12.1. On the old version of the distro, the hard disk devices are listed as /dev/cciss/etc., into the new release are listed as /dev/sd[x]. The problem is the upgrade don't see the older partition (Install from DVD), and don't see any SuSE to Upgrade.

What can be the right manner to solve this situation, and upgrade to OpenSuSE 12.1 without re-installing all?

Cordially,

Claudio Prono. I agree with Carl - I think you will have more problems going from 11.3 to 12.1. Strongly recommend 11.3 > 11.4 > 12.1.

Next, you are mixing apples with oranges about the disks. /dev/sdx is a single physical disk, /dev/cciss is a raid device. I'm only guessing here but I suspect the reason the DVD doesn't see the arrays is because the installation kernel does not have the kernel module/driver it needs to see the raid controller. Look at your 11.3 system with lsmod and modinfo for the module; it's likely it is in the initrd and so defined in /etc/sysconfig/kernel (which you can view with YaST /etc/sysconfig Editor).

If my guess is correct, the question becomes how to get the installation kernel to load that module. Long ago I would use linuxrc to do that, either by getting into its gui screen where you can specify modules or by using the insmod argument. But I'm not sure that is even possible anymore.

Otherwise, you may need to do an "in-place" upgrade with either zypper or YaST. When you do that you are using your installed kernel which already recognizes the array, and when the upgrade kernel is installed its initrd will be built using the controller module already in sysconfig.

I have also thinked that can be the the phisycal disk, but the raid is composed of two disks, so why i can see only one disk with fdisk -l ? I have also looked into the modules, the difference from the running system and the installation system is the cciss module, into the installation system isn't loaded. I have tryied to load it manually, from the command line, the module is loaded but not used by anyone... I am really confused about this... Cheers, Claudio. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

claudioml@mediaservice.net wrote:

I have worked with that upgrade for the last two days.

At first, i have tryied the online update from 11.3 to 11.4, and after a first reboot, the system hangs with an error like "unable to mount VFS root" at boot time. Booted it with a 11.4 rescue cd, and i can see the module hpsa, and not cciss. The raid is seen as /dev/sdx. Previously, into the 11.3 it was seen as /dev/cciss/.... According from what read at that link - http://cciss.sourceforge.net/ - that controller (Smart Array P410i), it uses hpsa. Into the previous kernels, it uses module cciss.

Right.

So, i have tried to fix it modifying fstab, mtab, system.map, and reinstalling grub (by the rescue disk, mounting disks, dev and proc, and chrooting it on the rescue), but with no success.

My last (and working try), is to re-install all from the scratch.

My questions are two:

- Any chance to have a working upgrade procedure with systems having that hardware? As i can think, that is a bad issue.

Please report it if you haven't already. https://bugzilla.novell.com/

- How to fix a situation like this with rescue? I have tryied it, but something is wrong....

Two things - 1) correct the references to /dev/cciss/whatever to /dev/disk/by-id links, and 2) rebuild the initrd (because it now requires module hpsa instead of cciss). -- Per Jessen, Zürich (21.4°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org