mkinitrd fails with perl-bootloader, no partition found errors

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11

Situation

Attempting to create a new ramdisk fails.
ERROR: "perl-bootloader: 2011-11-03 08:13:49 WARNING: GRUB::GrubDev2UnixDev: No partitions found for /dev/sda with 1."
A new ramdisk is created and the server seems to boot without a problem.

Resolution

Recreate the /boot/grub/device.map file.

1. cd /boot/grub/
2. mv device.map device.map.old
3. grub
4. At the grub> prompt, type quit
5. Rerun mkinitrd, it should no longer have the perl-bootloader errors.

Additional Information

The per-bootloader errors are due to incorrect device.map mappings. Removing /boot/grub/device.map forces grub to reprobe the BIOS for the disk devices and write the (hd) to /dev/ (GrubDev2UnixDev) mappings to a new device.map file.

There has also been a case where reprobing the BIOS failed to write the correct information to the /boot/grub/device.map file. A /dev/cciss/c0d0 was written to /boot/grub/device.map as /dev/sda1. After manually editing the device.map file with the correct /dev/cciss device, no further perl-bootloader errors were seen.

Disclaimer

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