Lucid netinst ISO + "linux auto" == VFS kernel panic

[Jonathan Matthews]

Hi all -

* The problem
I'm getting a VFS kernel panic when the auto-install invocation "linux auto
url=$URI" is used at boot as per the installation manual:
http://jpluscplusm.com/auto-install-failure.png (screenshot of panic)

* A bit more detail:
I'm trying to automate the deployment of some LTS servers using preseed. As
a stopgap before getting dedicated dhcp+pxe+tftp going, I'm attempting to
prove the validity of the preseed config (accessible via http://IP/)
alongside a physical copy of Lucid's 64-bit mini.iso. (This is on an R300,
FWIW)

The "auto installation" section of the 10.04 manual (
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/installation-guide/amd64/preseed-using.html#preseed-auto)
suggests that booting with just "linux auto
url=http://10.1.2.3/config<http://10.0.0.5/config>"
is both valid and sufficient. I'm finding, however, that I get a VFS panic
very early on, as detailed in this screenshot:
http://jpluscplusm.com/auto-install-failure.png.

* How I've troubleshot so far:
I successfully installed from the same mini.iso CD on this machine
previously. DHCP is known to be working and handing out working DNS in a
timely fashion. I've tried adding "raid=noautodetect" to the kernel params
to no avail (as per the screenshot). I've also tried adding "interface=auto
dhcp_timeout=60" and many permutations of these params.

Any thoughts? Is auto-install supported by the Lucid mini.iso? Am i missing
some net-related preseed params/config which wouldn't need explicitly
stating if I'd PXE'd the image over (i.e. local network config would be
known-good)?

Many thanks,
Jonathan
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