Interestingly we ran into a problem with our upgrade from 3.0.2 to ESX 3.5 in that the initrd file was too big to fit into the default ramdisk so the upgraded server would boot to service console but not full esx (kernel panic).

We edited the grub kernel parameter and set the ramdisk_size parameter to be bigger than the initrd for full ESX. The server would then boot into esx. Why the initrd file ended up being 92MB in size for only used about 18 MB of files puzzles me but at least the server came up.

Hi,

if possible start your ESX box in troubleshooting mode and do a lspic -v and lspci -v -vv and post the vendorID:deviceID
and the type of your scsi/sas/sata card.

kind regards,
Reinhard.

ps: Award points if you find answers helpful. Thanks.

01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Adaptec Adaptec Rocket (rev 02)
Subsystem: International Business Machines ServeRAID 8k/8k-l8
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
Memory at e7a00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) size=2M
Memory at e7e00000 (64-bit, prefetchable) size=128K
I/O ports at 5000 size=256
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> disabled size=32K
Capabilities: 40 #10 0001
Capabilities: e0 Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/2 Enable-

I have Dell 6850. Executed the following command to increase the queue depth

esxcfg-module -s ql2xmaxqdepth=64 qla2300_707_vmw

and esxcfg-boot -r

After reboot, I got the same error "Mounting root failed" and busybox prompt.

I can login into troubleshooting mode without any issues & it mounts the root volume.

I tried executing

esxcfg-boot -p

esxcfg-boot -r

but, no luck.

where the 199A firmware can be downloaded? I've searched on the dell site but i could only find the latest version.

thanks

Same/similar problem here. HP BL460c, internal RAID used for ESX installation. Had 3.0.2, all patches installed, running just fine, used the 3.0-3.5 tarball to upgrade. Everything seemed fine, no disks anywhere near going full, no error messages during upgrade. After reboot, can't mount root. I figured the quickest solution for me was to do a clean 3.5 installation rather than trying to find out what went wrong. Feels more clean anyway, but of course a serious problem for those not having that option.

Clean 3.5 installation went fine, and it boots. Having some iSCSI problems now, but that is another story.. Back on 3.0.2 for now (I had mirrored disks so I could go back to 3.0.2 with minimal effort)