Hi all,

I'm having a serious Problem with a Xenserver 5.5 System with local Storage.

This is how it all went:

We had a failing disk in the (only) Raid 5 Virtual Disk on the system. Due to a Controller error, a second disk was marked offline (but wasn't defect). The Raid is rebuilt now an Xenserver attempts to start. The boot splash screen is coming up, pressing ESC i am able to monitor what is happening.

The server says the following:

error mounting /proc
error mounting /sys
error mounting /dev/root

Kernel panic not syncing: attempt to kill init

And then reboots.

I'm a little stuck here as my knowledge doesn't go that deep.

Is the Xenserver filesystem corrupt? What can i try for a remedy.

As for the second part: Understandably my primary goal is to preserve the virtual machine data on the host. I know of the option to do a repair or clean installation while preserving the VMs.

So i booted with an Xenserver Install CD (v 5.6).

The Installer prompts me to answer the usual things (Keyboard layout, Name, IP, etc.) and then after those screens gives me the Option "Install Xenserver". Up to that i am not prompted anything about where to install the Xenserver (sda, etc.) and even not on which partition to set the local storage.

is this normal? My last upgrade install of a xenserver was long ago, so i can't really remember at which point of the installation i should be prompted with these information.

Any help appreciated here.

Thank you all in advance.

Tim

> error mounting /proc
> error mounting /sys
> error mounting /dev/root
>
> Kernel panic not syncing: attempt to kill init
>
> And then reboots.
>
> I'm a little stuck here as my knowledge doesn't go that deep.
>
> Is the Xenserver filesystem corrupt? What can i try for a remedy.

The initial system loader can't find the root file system. Perhaps just the label is missing, or the FS could be completely gone.

You're going to need someone who is comfortable with running command line Linux tools to discover the extent of the problem.

> As for the second part: Understandably my primary goal is to preserve the virtual machine data on the host. I
> know of the option to do a repair or clean installation while preserving the VMs.
>
> So i booted with an Xenserver Install CD (v 5.6).
>
> The Installer prompts me to answer the usual things (Keyboard layout, Name, IP, etc.) and then after those
> screens gives me the Option "Install Xenserver". Up to that i am not prompted anything about where to install
> the Xenserver (sda, etc.) and even not on which partition to set the local storage.
>
> is this normal? My last upgrade install of a xenserver was long ago, so i can't really remember at which point
> of the installation i should be prompted with these information.

This indicates that the installer wasn't able read the existing installation either. Proceeding would destroy it, we need to find out what's left and see what's salvageable.