Re: [Xen-users] Warning: unable to open an initial console

[Michael Paesold <mpaesold@xxxxxx>]

Aaron // LT wrote:
> > I am very sorry for this nonsense... this was my first attempt at 
> > using CentOS 4.1 with Xen. The reason for the error was the udev issue 
> > (as explained for FedoraCore 3) in the wiki. Perhaps I should add some 
> > lines there... ?
> > So the problem was solved by:
> > mkinitrd --builtin=ata_piix /boot/initrd-2.6.12.3-xen0.img 2.6.12.3-xen0
> > and adding the initrd to the grub configuration.
>
> Thanks, did that get it working for you?  I'm guessing its the SCSI 
> controller which is causing the problems, I'll see if I can do a similar 
> step for the SCSI controller...
Yes, it worked for me. Short explaination:

Similar to what is described here, the problem is udev:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenFaq#head-ea8b39d71e49cc16d287257de4c482f99d883097

Before udev is started, /dev/console, /dev/null etc. do not exist in the 
root file system. The solution is to use an initial ram disk that 
contains these entries.
To create an initrd for the xen kernels do:

cd /lib/modules     # look for the correct kernel version
depmod 2.6.12.3-xen0    # create module dependencies if missing

# create the initrd image
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.6.12.3-xen0.img 2.6.12.3-xen0

If mkinitrd complains that it can't find a specific module (from 
/etc/modules.conf), and you know that it is compiled into the kernel 
directly, you can tell mkinitrd so. E.g. for the ata_piix module:
mkinitrd --builtin=ata_piix /boot/initrd-2.6.12.3-xen0.img 2.6.12.3-xen0

Then add an additional line to the grub.conf file for the correct kernel:
module /initrd-2.6.12.3-xen0.img
or module /boot/initrd-2.6.12.3-xen0.img if you don't have a boot partition.

Hope that helps. With this additional step, both Xen 2.0.7 and the 
latest unstable builds work well on this hardware with CentOS 4.1.
Best Regards,
Michael Paesold

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