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Linux Headquarters - Kernel v2.6.9 -Documentation-filesystems-ext3.txt

See also -src-linux-xscale-linux-2.6.24-Documentation-filesystems-ext3.txt - DD-WRT - Trac

Kernel v2.6.9 /Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt

Filename:	/Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt
Lines Added:	58
Lines Deleted:	14
Also changed in:	(Previous) 2.6.9-final  2.6.9-rc4  2.6.9-rc3  2.6.9-rc2  2.6.9-rc1-bk19  2.6.9-rc1-bk18  (Following) 2.6.15-rc5-git3  2.6.15-rc5-git4  2.6.15-rc5-git5  2.6.15-rc5-git6  2.6.15-rc5-git7  2.6.15-rc6

 

Location

 2.6.9
 Documentation
 filesystems
 ext3.txt
 

 

Patch

 

diff -Nru a/Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt   2004-10-18 14:56:28 -07:00
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt   2004-10-18 14:56:28 -07:00
@@ -22,6 +22,63 @@
          the inode which will represent the ext3 file
          system's journal file.
 
+noload         Don't load the journal on mounting.
+
+data=journal      All data are committed into the journal prior
+         to being written into the main file system.
+
+data=ordered   (*)   All data are forced directly out to the main file
+         system prior to its metadata being committed to
+         the journal.
+
+data=writeback      Data ordering is not preserved, data may be
+         written into the main file system after its
+         metadata has been committed to the journal.
+
+commit=nrsec   (*)   Ext3 can be told to sync all its data and metadata
+         every 'nrsec' seconds. The default value is 5 seconds.
+         This means that if you lose your power, you will lose,
+         as much, the latest 5 seconds of work (your filesystem
+         will not be damaged though, thanks to journaling). This
+         default value (or any low value) will hurt performance,
+         but it's good for data-safety. Setting it to 0 will
+         have the same effect than leaving the default 5 sec.
+         Setting it to very large values will improve
+         performance.
+
+barrier=1      This enables/disables barriers. barrier=0 disables it,
+         barrier=1 enables it.
+
+orlov      (*)   This enables the new Orlov block allocator. It's enabled
+         by default.
+
+oldalloc      This disables the Orlov block allocator and enables the
+         old block allocator. Orlov should have better performance,
+         we'd like to get some feedback if it's the contrary for
+         you.
+
+user_xattr   (*)   Enables POSIX Extended Attributes. It's enabled by
+         default, however you need to confifure its support
+         (CONFIG_EXT3_FS_XATTR). This is neccesary if you want
+         to use POSIX Acces Control Lists support. You can visit
+         http://acl.bestbits.at to know more about POSIX Extended
+         attributes.
+
+nouser_xattr      Disables POSIX Extended Attributes.
+
+acl      (*)   Enables POSIX Access Control Lists support. This is
+         enabled by default, however you need to configure
+         its support (CONFIG_EXT3_FS_POSIX_ACL). If you want
+         to know more about ACLs visit http://acl.bestbits.at
+
+noacl         This option disables POSIX Access Control List support.
+
+reservation
+
+noreservation
+
+resize=
+
 bsddf       (*)   Make 'df' act like BSD.
 minixdf         Make 'df' act like Minix.
 
@@ -30,8 +87,6 @@
 
 debug         Extra debugging information is sent to syslog.
 
-noload         Don't load the journal on mounting.
-
 errors=remount-ro(*)   Remount the filesystem read-only on an error.
 errors=continue      Keep going on a filesystem error.
 errors=panic      Panic and halt the machine if an error occurs.
@@ -48,17 +103,6 @@
 
 sb=n         Use alternate superblock at this location.
 
-data=journal      All data are committed into the journal prior 
-         to being written into the main file system.
-      
-data=ordered   (*)   All data are forced directly out to the main file 
-         system prior to its metadata being committed to 
-         the journal.
-      
-data=writeback     Data ordering is not preserved, data may be 
-         written into the main file system after its
-         metadata has been committed to the journal.
-
 quota         Quota options are currently silently ignored.
 noquota         (see fs/ext3/super.c, line 594)
 grpquota
@@ -114,7 +158,7 @@
 -------------
 
 Ext2 partitions can be easily convert to ext3, with `tune2fs -j <dev>`.
- Ext3 is fully compatible with Ext2.  Ext3 partitions can easily be
+Ext3 is fully compatible with Ext2.  Ext3 partitions can easily be
 mounted as Ext2.
 
 External Tools

[May 6, 2008] JBD error message barrier-based sync failed

"Barriers do provide a greater degree of performance for journaling file systems and help ensure data is correctly written out to the disk so this patch can degrade filesystem performance. " So disabling them due to the bug described in Novell support note 3605538 Ext3 filesystem goes read-only without the underlying storage reporting errors can degrade performance

This document (3907838) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

environment

Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
Novell Open Enterprise Server (Linux based)
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

situation

ERROR: JBD: barrier-based sync failed on sda1 - disabling barriers"
or, in general: JBD: barrier-based sync failed on storage_device - disabling barriers

resolution

This message is primarily an informational message; it does not indicate a problem.

Suppress this message globally

Please note: This method is only available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server / Desktop (SLES/SLED) up to version 9 and for Open Enterprise Server (OES) version 1. From SLES/SLED 10 and OES2 on it is not possible to suppress the message globally. Instead use the solution in the section "Suppress this message for one filesystem".

To suppress this message globally, pass the parameter

barrier=off

to the kernel when booting (e.g., when using the GRUB boot loader, through /boot/grub/menu.lst). This will cause the kernel not to attempt to use the transaction barrier mechanism.

Suppress this message for one filesystem

To suppress this message for one particular ext3 filesystem, use the mount option barrier=0 when mounting the filesystem.

Additional notes

Background

By default, the Linux kernel will try to use transaction barriers. Transaction barriers are an additional mechanism to help maintain data integrity.  In general, modern storage subsystems may cache writes and may occasionally reorder pending writes in order to increase write performance. While this is fine in general, it is not desirable when handling journal data for journaled filesystems. With journal data, metadata updates, that is updates to the journal, should be written out to the storage prior to the regular data they are associated with, to make true crash recovery possible.

The informational message indicates that  the storage driver and/or the storage device do not support transaction barriers. Under normal operation, this does not compromise data integrity. However, barriers do provide a greater degree of performance for journaling file systems and help ensure data is correctly written out to the disk.

"JBD" in this message refers to the Journaling Block Device, an abstraction that was developed to provide the journaling capabilities of the ext3 filesystem on top of the infrastructure of the ext2 filesystem on which ext3 is based. JBD is now used by the OCFS2 filesystem as well.

document

Document ID:	3907838
Creation Date:	2008-02-01 05:33:00.0
Modified Date:	2008-02-01 05:32:20.0
Novell Product:	Open Enterprise Server
Novell Product:	SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
Novell Product:	SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Novell Product:	SUSE Linux

[May 1, 2008] Ext3 filesystem goes read-only without the underlying storage reporting errors     Novell support note 3605538

This was the first serious problem with Suse 10 that we faced since Feb 2007. It proved to be quite critical for us. Now it is described in Novell support note 3605538 Ext3 filesystem goes read-only without the underlying storage reporting errors  The frequency of experiencing of this bug on production servers diminished after installation of SP1 but it did not went away. As of  Feb 2008 it still exists as we were never informed about workaround proposed (may be the workaround was created only in Feb 2008; we discovered the document only in May 2008)

Status(Last updated: 2008-02-25)

This issue is not yet fixed in a maintenance update of the kernel. Root cause analysis has been performed and it is expected that a fix for this issue will be included in the next maintenance update of the kernel.

Workaround

Explicitly disable barrier support for the affected filesystems, e.g. by specifying
 

barrier=0
 

in /etc/fstab's mount options field for the affected filesystems.

[Apr 17, 2008] Just enough operating system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

JeOS is the abbreviation (pronounced "juice") for the concept of Just Enough Operating System as it applies to a software appliance.

JeOS is not a generic, one-size-fits-all operating system. Rather, it refers to a customized operating system that precisely fits the needs of a particular application. The application's OS requirements can be determined manually, or with an analytical tool, such as rPath's rBuilder.

Therefore, JeOS includes only the pieces of an operating system (often Linux) required to support a particular application and any other third-party components contained in the appliance. This makes the appliance more efficient, smaller, more secure and higher performing than an application running under a full general purpose OS.

[Apr 17, 2008] Novell announces Suse appliance program for ISVs - LinuxWorld

See press-release Novell Announces SUSE Appliance Program and LimeJeos - openSUSE

The program will enable ISVs to create appliances combining their applications with Suse Linux Enterprise in an integrated package.

Novell also announced the beta release of Suse Linux Enterprise JeOS, a minimized version of the Suse Linux Enterprise platform that ISVs can use for creating appliances

... ... ...

Novell also announced Wednesday that it will officially participate in the LimeJeOS project, which is an existing community-led project building a minimized version of the openSuse Linux distribution. Novell will release several new components of the Suse Appliance Program, including an automated tool to build appliances, it added.

Tech Watch InfoWorld Staff InfoWorld Renault in Linux deal with Microsoft, Novell January 30, 2008 0516 PM By Paul Krill

Microsoft will deliver more than 1,000 support subscription certificates for Suse Linux Enterprise Server to French automaker Renault, under an agreement announced by Microsoft and Novell on Wednesday.

Renault will receive priority support subscriptions to Novell's Suse Linux distribution. Renault plans to consolidate existing Linux distributions to Suse Linux Enterprise Server with the intent of improving interoperability and taking better advantage of virtualization, Microsoft and Novell said.

Through a 2006 agreement between Novell and Microsoft, Microsoft has purchased support certificates to Suse Linux, with Novell to provide the support.

[Jan 24, 2008] freshmeat.net Project details for cgipaf

The package also contain Solaris binary of chpasswd clone, which is extremely useful for mass changes of passwords in corporate environments which include Solaris and other Unixes that does not have chpasswd utility (HP-UX is another example in this category).   Version 1.3.2 now includes Solaris binary of chpasswd which works on Solaris 9 and 10.

cgipaf is a combination of three CGI programs.

• passwd.cgi, which allow users to update their password,
• viewmailcfg.cgi, which allows users to view their current mail configuration,
• mailcfg.cgi, which updates the mail configuration.

All programs use PAM for user authentication. It is possible to run a script to update SAMBA passwords or NIS configuration when a password is changed. mailcfg.cgi creates a .procmailrc in the user's home directory. A user with too many invalid logins can be locked. The minimum and maximum UID can be set in the configuration file, so you can specify a range of UIDs that are allowed to use cgipaf.

[Jan 10, 2008] Find the speed of your Ethernet card in Linux

October 27, 2005  | All about Linux

For logging on to the net or for attaching as a node on a LAN, your computer needs a network card. The network card forms the interface between your computer and the network. There are different kinds of network cards available in the market depending on its speed and other features. Here is a tip to find out the characteristics of your network card.

If you want to find what type of network card is used, its speed, on which IRQ it is listed, and the chip type used, you use the following command :
 

# dmesg |grep eth0

Here eth0 is the first network card. If you have additional cards, it will be named eth1, eth2 and so on. And here is the output of the above command :
 

divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xd800, 00:80:48:34:c2:84, IRQ 9
eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
divert: freeing divert_blk for eth0
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xd800, 00:90:44:34:a5:33, IRQ 9
eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
...

The important things to note here are those highlighted in colour. As you can see from the above listing, my ethernet card is a RealTek RTL8139 chipset based card on IRQ 9 (Interrupt Request). Its speed is 100 Mbps and is a full-duplex card. And the link is up.

... ... ...

Another tool which also does the same thing is ethtool. Try the following command on your machine to see the output.
 

# ethtool eth0

Settings for eth0:
  Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
  Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                          100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
  Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
  Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                          100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
  Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
  Speed: 100Mb/s
  Duplex: Full
  Port: MII
  PHYAD: 32
  Transceiver: internal
  Auto-negotiation: on
  Supports Wake-on: pumbg
  Wake-on: p
  Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
  Link detected: yes

Here full duplex, half duplex and auto-negotiation have the following meanings.
 

Full Duplex - Logic that enables concurrent sending and receiving. This is usually desirable and enabled when your computer is connected to a switch.
 

Half Duplex - This logic requires a card to only send or receive at a single point of time. When your machine is connected to a Hub, it auto-negotiates itself and uses half duplex to avoid collisions.
 

Auto-negotiation - This is the process of deciding whether to work in full duplex mode or half duplex mode. An ethernet card supporting autonegotiation will decide for itself which mode is the optimal one depending on the network it is attached to.

[Dec 21, 2007] LXER interview with John Hull - the manager of the Dell Linux engineering team

The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. Have the expectations been met so far? Will Dell ever release sales figures for Ubuntu systems?

The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon. Dell has a policy not to release sales numbers, so I don't expect us to make Ubuntu sales figures available publicly.

[Dec 21, 2007] Red Hat to get new CEO from Delta Air Lines Underexposed - CNET News.com

"When you take them out of the big buildings, without the imprimatur of Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle, or HP around them, they just didn't hold up."

[Dec 12, 2007] Office Depot Taps SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell to Reduce Information Technology Complexity and Control Costs Financial News

December 12, 2007 | Yahoo! Finance

...Office Depot ... has chosen SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server as a core operating platform for the company's global servers. The goal of the standardization is to reduce complexity and control costs while maintaining superior stability and performance for Office Depot's end-user applications.

[Dec 03, 2007] All about Linux swap space by Gary Sims

There are some errors. Not having swap doesn't mean that your kernel will crash.  Recommendation of allocating 1 GB swap for 128 MB of RAM is questionable. The swap management needs physical RAM, and the more swap you have, the more RAM you need. Linus have said that you should generally aviod hving more than twice your amount of RAM for swap partition. And for most application servers (for example Oracle application server) half-memory swap is adequate.

December 03, 2007 |  Linux.com

Linux has two forms of swap space: the swap partition and the swap file. The swap partition is an independent section of the hard disk used solely for swapping; no other files can reside there. The swap file is a special file in the filesystem that resides amongst your system and data files.

To see what swap space you have, use the command swapon -s. The output will look something like this:

Filename        Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/sda5       partition       859436  0       -1

Each line lists a separate swap space being used by the system. Here, the 'Type' field indicates that this swap space is a partition rather than a file, and from 'Filename' we see that it is on the disk sda5. The 'Size' is listed in kilobytes, and the 'Used' field tells us how many kilobytes of swap space has been used (in this case none). 'Priority' tells Linux which swap space to use first. One great thing about the Linux swapping subsystem is that if you mount two (or more) swap spaces (preferably on two different devices) with the same priority, Linux will interleave its swapping activity between them, which can greatly increase swapping performance.

To add an extra swap partition to your system, you first need to prepare it. Step one is to ensure that the partition is marked as a swap partition and step two is to make the swap filesystem. To check that the partition is marked for swap, run as root:

fdisk -l /dev/hdb

Replace /dev/hdb with the device of the hard disk on your system with the swap partition on it. You should see output that looks like this:

 Device Boot    Start   End     Blocks  Id      System
/dev/hdb1       2328    2434    859446  82      Linux swap / Solaris

If the partition isn't marked as swap you will need to alter it by running fdisk and using the 't' menu option. Be careful when working with partitions -- you don't want to delete important partitions by mistake or change the id of your system partition to swap by mistake. All data on a swap partition will be lost, so double-check every change you make. Also note that Solaris uses the same ID as Linux swap space for its partitions, so be careful not to kill your Solaris partitions by mistake.

Once a partition is marked as swap, you need to prepare it using the mkswap (make swap) command as root:

mkswap /dev/hdb1

If you see no errors, your swap space is ready to use. To activate it immediately, type:

swapon /dev/hdb1

You can verify that it is being used by running swapon -s. To mount the swap space automatically at boot time, you must add an entry to the /etc/fstab file, which contains a list of filesystems and swap spaces that need to be mounted at boot up. The format of each line is:

<file system>     <mount point>     <type>     <options>        <dump>    <pass>

Since swap space is a special type of filesystem, many of these parameters aren't applicable. For swap space, add:

/dev/hdb1       none    swap    sw      0       0

where /dev/hdb1 is the swap partition. It doesn't have a specific mount point, hence none. It is of type swap with options of sw, and the last two parameters aren't used so they are entered as 0.

To check that your swap space is being automatically mounted without having to reboot, you can run the swapoff -a command (which turns off all swap spaces) and then swapon -a (which mounts all swap spaces listed in the /etc/fstab file) and then check it with swapon -s.

... ... ...
 

How big should my swap space be?

It is possible to run a Linux system without a swap space, and the system will run well if you have a large amount of memory -- but if you run out of physical memory then the system will crash, as it has nothing else it can do, so it is advisable to have a swap space, especially since disk space is relatively cheap.

A rule of thumb is as follows:

1. For a desktop system, use a swap space of double system memory, as it will allow you to run a large number of applications (many of which may will be idle and easily swapped), making more RAM available for the active applications;
2. For a server, have a smaller amount of swap available (say half of physical memory) so that you have some flexibility for swapping when needed, but monitor the amount of swap space used and upgrade your RAM if necessary;

... ... ...

The Linux 2.6 kernel added a new kernel parameter called swappiness to let administrators tweak the way Linux swaps. It is a number from 0 to 100. In essence, higher values lead to more pages being swapped, and lower values lead to more applications being kept in memory, even if they are idle. Kernel maintainer Andrew Morton has said that he runs his desktop machines with a swappiness of 100, stating that "My point is that decreasing the tendency of the kernel to swap stuff out is wrong. You really don't want hundreds of megabytes of BloatyApp's untouched memory floating about in the machine. Get it out on the disk, use the memory for something useful."

One downside to Morton's idea is that if memory is swapped out too quickly then application response time drops, because when the application's window is clicked the system has to swap the application back into memory, which will make it feel slow.

The default value for swappiness is 60. You can alter it temporarily (until you next reboot) by typing as root:

echo 50 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

If you want to alter it permanently then you need to change the vm.swappiness parameter in the /etc/sysctl.conf file.

Conclusion

Managing swap space is an essential aspect of system administration. With good planning and proper use swapping can provide many benefits. Don't be afraid to experiment, and always monitor your system to ensure you are getting the results you need.

Linux Setup - Fking Beagle on Suse 10

F**king Beagle on Suse 10

Ron Albright 2006-03-25, 10:19 am How do I stop it, forever. I figured out how to kill the Beagle process that were taking up 500MB of my memory but there are still process starting every night by root and suing to another uid and they never exit. What is starting these things and how do I stop them? I can't find anything in the rc scripts or crontabs. Short of uninstalling it where can I find information on what's starting anything related to Beagle? I can find all kinds of information on installing and using it but nothing on stopping it. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Nico Kadel-Garcia 2006-03-25, 10:19 am Ron Albright wrote: > How do I stop it, forever. I figured out how to kill the Beagle > process that were taking up 500MB of my memory but there are still > process starting every night by root and suing to another uid and > they never exit. What is starting these things and how do I stop > them? I can't find anything in the rc scripts or crontabs. Short of > uninstalling it where can I find information on what's starting > anything related to Beagle? I can find all kinds of information on > installing and using it but nothing on stopping it. Any pointers > would be greatly appreciated. rpm -e beagle? It seems to be an RPM package.

J. Clarke 2006-03-25, 10:19 am Ron Albright wrote: > How do I stop it, forever. I figured out how to kill the Beagle process > that were taking up 500MB of my memory but there are still process > starting every night by root and suing to another uid and they never exit. > What is starting these things and how do I stop them? I can't find > anything in the rc scripts or crontabs. Short of uninstalling it where can > I find information on what's starting anything related to Beagle? I can > find all kinds of information on installing and using it but nothing on > stopping it. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. You need to find what is starting beagled and either induce it to quit starting beagled or have it start beagled with "beagled --disable-scheduler". Once beagled is running it does its own scheduling. Best thing to do about it IMO is remove the whole package. -- --John to email, dial "usenet" and validate (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[Dec 1, 2007]  SUSE Linux Enterprise troubleshooting Fixing boot problems by repairing a broken initrd by Sander van Vugt

Troubleshooting is a near-science by itself on which I could spend many articles, but I'll try to keep it brief. During the system boot procedure, several phases occur, starting in GRUB, the Linux boot loader. Roughly, these are the following:

1. GRUB loads the kernel
2. GRUB loads the initrd
3. The root file system is accessed by the kernel
4. The /sbin/init process takes over.
5. The initial boot stage happens
6. The default runlevel is activated
7. A login prompt occurs.

When a problem occurs, try to pin-point it to any of these seven phases. In some cases it is possible to tell exactly what happens, more often you will see that you can only give a rough indication of what is happening. In the case of a kernel panic, you can be sure about one thing: GRUB has loaded successfully and you are not yet at phase 4 of the boot procedure where the init process takes over. If a kernel panic occurs immediately after a driver installation, this is often caused by an error in the initrd.

How can we be sure? Sometimes it is quite obvious that the error is in initrd, as GRUB tells you that it failed to load the file /boot/initrd, in other cases some forensic work is needed as only a vague driver error message is generated. In the latter case, you have to check if the driver that fails is included in the initrd, as this helper file is used by the kernel to include drivers that are needed immediately. On SUSE Linux Enterprise, the file /etc/sysconfig/kernel contains a list of all drivers that should be included in the initrd. When you run the mkinitrd command, these drivers are written to your new initrd. When this happens automatically, something could go wrong.

Step 2: Fixing it
If an error occurs in the initrd, you will not be able to boot your server anymore. So, to fix it, you need the rescue system that is available from the installation dvd. This rescue system loads a complete Linux system off of the installation media. The next step is to mount all your Linux file systems off of that disk. Next, you need to run mkinitrd. You can only do this once the local file systems are all mounted, because the initrd has to be written to the local file systems. However, there is a caveat.

The problem with this approach is in the disk devices access in combination with the necessary use of a chroot environment. To start, you need to mount your server's file systems on a temporary mount point like /mnt. Let's say that you have the /boot directory on /dev/sda1 and your / directory on /dev/sda2. To mount them, you need the following two commands:

1. mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
2. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Since the mkinitrd command wants to write the new initrd in /boot and the /boot on your hard drive is now in /mnt/boot, you need to change the root directory to be set to /mnt. You can use chroot to do that:

chroot /mnt

The contents of /mnt now becomes /, so all path references are OK. But we still have a problem. If you look in the /proc and /dev directory on your new root environment, you'll see that /proc is empty and /dev is as good as empty. Both are dynamically created file systems and they are created at the moment that your server boots. This means that they were created in / when the server booted from the rescue cd. Now, since the new root is in /mnt, you cannot access them anymore. We need to fix this.

1. Type exit to exit from the chroot environment. You'll now get back to the original /mnt under which your servers local file systems where mounted.
2. Use mount -t proc none /mnt/proc to make the proc file system available from the /mnt environment.
3. Use mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev which will make the original /dev which was filled by the udev process when booting available from /mnt/dev.

Now that you have the repair environment all in place, you need to check that the line in /etc/sysconfig/kernel that is used to generate a new initrd is as it should be. You are looking for the following line:

INITRD_MODULES="ata_piix processor thermal fan jbd ext3 dm_mod edd pciback"

This line will be different on every server, so check to make sure that all modules are included that are necessary to start your server (your server's documentation will help you with that.)

Now under /mnt you have the complete environment that is needed to repair your server, so take the following two steps to fix your server.

1. Activate /mnt using cd /mnt and make it your new root environment using chroot .
2. Issue the command mkinitrd to write the new initrd to /boot.

You have now fixed the initrd. Reboot your server and check that everything is working all right. 

[Nov 2, 2007] Que Publishing - 067232749X - Novell® Open Enterprise Server Administrator's Handbook SUSE LINUX Edition