After installing a new kernel or rebuilding the initrd in RHEL 5, the system panics on boot with "Volume group <vg> not found"

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • Not able to boot into new kernel
  • When booting from a new initrd the system cannot find the root volume group and panics
  • After installing a new kernel, the system panics on boot with messages similar to:
Red Hat nash version 5.1.19.6 starting
  Reading all physical volumes.  This may take a while...
  No volume groups found
  Volume group "VolGroup00" not found
Unable to access resume device (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01)
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5
  • Using an LVM logical volume for the root / file system

Subscriber exclusive content

A Red Hat subscription provides unlimited access to our knowledgebase, tools, and much more.

Current Customers and Partners

Log in for full access

Log In

New to Red Hat?

Learn more about Red Hat subscriptions

Using a Red Hat product through a public cloud?

How to access this content