don't use kernel with initrd when installing xen instances

[risc at volumehost.com]

Henning:

i've had a similar problem here with the raid servers i manage.

long story short of it:
FAI-CD installs on /dev/hda. however, when the machine is booted, the / partition is really on /dev/sdi!
(8 disks of raid show up IN FRONT of the root filesystem connected straight to the motherboard!)

same symptoms.

Julia Longtin <risc at volumehost.com>


On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 09:18:10PM +0200, Henning Sprang wrote:
> Hi,
> I just had a good while of time wasted when finding this out:
> 
> When installing a xen instance with FAI, and having it configured to
> use and initrd, the root file system won't get mounted. The vm hangs
> on the message:
> 
> Boot: waiting for root file system
> 
> and after a while it just runs the busybox system contained in the initrd.
> I finally found out that the only difference between other systems
> where i made FAI installations and the one I tried to install was the
> initrd, removed it, and everything was working fine.
> I am not so deep into the functioning of the initrd, but probably the
> root mounting process via ramdisk doesn't allow another change of the
> root file system to the nfs root somehow.
> 
> In "normal" FAI install mode this problem probably doesn't occur
> because either the fai-kernels don't use an initrd or they have an
> initrd that don't have this problem - I didn't check that yet.
> 
> Henning