kernel panic on boot

Akemi Yagi amyagi at gmail.com
Wed Dec 20 15:48:25 UTC 2006


On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:05:59 -0700, Michal Jaegermann wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 05:47:28PM -0800, Steven I Usdansky wrote:
>> Also, the initrd-xxx-img
>> file for the more recent kernels are over twice the size of the file
>> associated with kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6. Why?
> 
> This at least I can tell. :-)  'nash' used to be linked static
> and now was replaced by dynamic one.  All these libraries and
> a loader on initrd swell it in a substantial manner.
> 
>    Michal

I found this post somewhere.  Sorry I don't have the original poster's
credentials.

===beginning of posting===
The error that causes all the trouble is "mount: could not find 
filesystem '/dev/root'". Appartently, in the init script within
initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img, the command 'mount /sysroot' is trying to
mount /dev/root to /sysroot. Fedora 5 does not use /dev/root like in the
previous versions of Fedora. Instead, it uses '/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00'
or '/dev/hda1' (or whereever '/' is located) to mount to /sysroot. For
some reason, when init calls 'mount /sysroot', it's trying to mount
/dev/root to /sysroot, instead of /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 to /sysroot.
This messes up everything after this step in the init process. When it
does a switchroot at the end, it fails. After killing init, it causes the
kernel panic.

Here's the fix:

1) Boot with the rescue CD
2) Type 'chroot /mnt/sysimage' (wherever it mounts the Fedora 5 partition)
3) 'cd /boot'
4) 'mkdir newinit'
5) 'cd newinit'
6) 'gunzip -c ../initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img | cpio -idmv'
7) 'vi init'
8) Find 'mount /sysroot' (near the end of the file)
9) Delete or comment this out
10) Replace with 'mount -o defaults --ro -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /sysroot' where /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 is the mount point for /
11) ':wq' out of vi
12) 'find . | cpio --quiet -c -o >../newinitrd'
13) 'cd ..' - you are now in /boot
14) 'mv initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.bak' - backup current initrd img file (just in case)
15) 'gzip -9 < newinitrd > initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img'
16) Reboot the computer without the CD

* Steps 4-6,12,13,15 were taken from another site, but I couldn't 
post the URL. I'll try in my next post.

This should fix it. I'm glad I can finally run Fedora 5 on my box.

MarkCole, I'm not sure if you were experiencing the exact same 
problems I was with mounting root. However, I hope this helps anyone else
experiencing the same problems I had.

Andy

===end of posting===





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