I'm trying to use a new kernel (2.6.32) on RHEL 5.10 32bit (2.6.18 kernel). The .32 kernel is downloaded from kernel.org not patched by Redhat. I know this is silly, but upgrading to RHEL 6 is not an option to us.
I did make menuconfig; make; make modules; make modules_install; make install; reboot. Then I got a kernel panic. I built 2.6.18 kernel from source, either patched by redhat or not. Both worked fine.
My question is whether it's possible to use a 2.6.32 kernel with all the filesystem and libraries from a RHEL 5.10 installation (2.6.18). If it's possible then what's wrong with my process?
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Mounting root filesystem.
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
Setting up other filesystems.
Setting up new root fs
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults
setuproot: error mounting /proc: Nosuch file or dirctory
Switching to new root and running init.
unmounting old /dev
unmounting old /proc
unmounting old /sys
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32.63 #1
Call Trace:
[<c0xxxxxx>] ? panic
[<c0xxxxxx>] ? do_exit
[<c0xxxxxx>] ? do_group_exit
[<c0xxxxxx>] ? sys_exit_group
[<c0xxxxxx>] ? syscall_call
My /boot/grub/grub.conf has the following.
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-63 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.32-63.img
Thanks to all the help and comments I'm able to answer it myself.
This is what I tried but failed. Make a diff between the old and new initrd (gunzip | cpio). There are different modules installed, but they don't matter. I disabled loadable modules (everything build-in), the problem remains. I compiled busybox and put it in the initrd (edit /init), and I got a shell. From there I can manually mknod and mount the file system, but still have the kernel panic when switching root.
Finally I found this. It has a better description and solution to the problem. Enable "deprecated sysfs" and it's all fixed.