Please Help!! - "Kernel Panic - Attempted to kill init!"

[Rick Stevens]

Steve Kasian wrote:
> --- "Waldher, Travis R" <Travis.R.Waldher at boeing.com> wrote:
> 
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Steve Kasian [mailto:stevekasian at yahoo.com] 
>>>Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 9:31 AM
>>>To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
>>>Subject: RE: Please Help!! - "Kernel Panic - Attempted to kill
>>
>>init!"
>>
>>>--- "Waldher, Travis R" <Travis.R.Waldher at boeing.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>>>From: Steve Kasian [mailto:stevekasian at yahoo.com]
>>>>>Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 1:58 AM
>>>>>To: redhat-install-list at redhat.com
>>>>>Subject: Please Help!! - "Kernel Panic - Attempted to kill
>>
>>init!"
>>
>>>>>Please, no complaints about my text not being exactly how 
>>>
>>>you like 
>>>
>>>>>to read it, etc...  this is childish and pointless.  I am only 
>>>>>looking for responses from those of you whom actually 
>>>
>>>KNOW EXACTLY 
>>>
>>>>>what the deal is with this error, and can give me an educated 
>>>>>response as to how I can correct it.  No "iffy" 
>>>
>>>suggestions please.  
>>>
>>>>>I have spent literally weeks going through hundreds of 
>>>
>>>suggestions 
>>>
>>>>>and had absolutely no luck with any of them getting me anywhere 
>>>>>other than frustrated as all heck.
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks...
>>>>>
>>>>>-Steve
>>>>
>>>>Well dude, I was going to reply and ask if you started the install
>>
>>>>with the nousb switch or any others.
>>>>
>>>>But seeing as how my response is iffy... Maybe I won't.
>>>>
>>>>I understand your upset and frustrated, but taking it out on
>>
>>people 
>>
>>>>HERE isn't the answer.
>>>
>>>
>>>Travis... once again, another empty-headed response from 
>>>someone who has
>>>no business replying in the first place.  The only people taking
>>>anything out on anyone here are people like yourself, who respond
>>
>>with
>>
>>>stupid, pointless emails.  I tell you I'm not interested in 
>>>hearing from
>>>people like yourself, so you respond anyway... just out of 
>>>spite?  Grow
>>>up and get a life out from behind your monitor.
>>>
>>>This is the exact reason why I have sat on this issue and never
>>
>>posted
>>
>>>anything about it anywhere on the net for the last YEAR... because I
>>>just KNEW there would be nothing but a bunch of losers out there
>>
>>like
>>
>>>the last two idiots filling up the thread with a bunch of 
>>>worthless B.S.
>>> I thought maybe I'd finally found a forum where there might be some
>>>level of intelligence.  Apparently I was wrong.
>>>
>>>Good luck, everyone.  I'm out.
>>>
>>
>>Pot - kettle - black.
>>
>>My reply was laced with sarcasm due to your disrespect for those on
>>this
>>list.  If you want help, I would suggest posting up here with an
>>appropriately polite email.  Not an email implying that everyone that
>>is
>>going to respond will be a "empty-headed" type person that will ask
>>"stupid" questions or offer up "iffy" answers.  All those answers you
>>consider "Iffy" may actually lead you to the solution.
>>
>>I did offer something up, you chose to ignore it.
>>
>>**** WHAT switches did you use during setup?  Any? ****
>>
>>Your post never stated that you did.
> 
> 
> 
> Travis-
> 
> Your response was laced with sarcasm due to the fact that you just
> couldn't leave well enough alone when you didn't have anything worth
> posting that would fit the criteria I laid out for responses I was
> interested in receiving.  Your interpretation of my "implication" is
> simply a product of your own guilty concience.  At least you're self
> aware, I'll give you that much.
> 
> 
> Rick,
> 
> Thanks for your more mature and enlightening approach.  It's much
> appreciated.  I'll heed your advice on the political end of things.
> I was just hoping someone out there might read this post and have a
> light bulb go off in their head, suddenly remembering having encountered
> this specific problem in the past, either themselves or through someone
> else, and might remember a fix for it.  That's the only reason I said I
> wasn't interested in iffy ideas.  I've read countless slews of
> suggestions thrown back to people who have posted with this exact
> problem and nothing ever resolved the issue for them.  Heck, even on
> RedHat's own Bug forum, the techs who replied ended up CLOSING out the
> issues without a resolution.  Sounds like it was something to be swept
> under the rug as far as they were concerned, eh?
> 
> As for the issue at hand, I can't seem to get past the Boot: prompt... 
> ever.  It just won't go.  I have tried noapic, noathlon, i386, text,
> etc...  I've run the whole gamut, but nothing works.  (I've actually
> forgotten how many of the parameters I've tried, as there were so many.)
>  It tells me it's loading 3 things at the bottom of the screen, then the
> screen clears and a whole bunch of information gets dumped to the screen
> at lightning speed, as is normal, but then it suddenly crashes with the
> error.
> 
> As far as the components are concerned, everything is working properly. 
> I run Win98SE and WinXP on the same machine (multiple HDDs) and it's the
> smoothest running and most flawless box I've ever used. That's one
> reason why I'm so blown away by this.

Still test the memory.  I've seen bad RAM run on Windows a lot, but
flat won't work with Linux.  Weird, but true.  Kernel panics at install
boots are almost always caused by bad RAM or some issue with CPU
overclocking or memory sharing.  If you could try the install using a
serial console and posting the results of the "info at lightning speed",
I may be able to decipher what's happening a bit more.

> I'm almost convinced it's a hardware compatibility related issue - such
> as the processor, motherboard chipset, etc.  I don't find any Soyo
> products listed on the RedHat site under certified compatible hardware,
> but Soyo swears up and down that there's no problem with the
> compatibility of their board with RedHat Linux.  It's quite possible
> they're full of crap in claiming that, however.

We run a number of Soyo Athlon mobos here...sorry, can't recall the
model numbers offhand.  The only things I can recall with them is that
one beastie did require "ide=nodma noapic" to do the install.  Once the
production kernel was up, it could be removed and a subsequent BIOS
upgrade allowed a reinstall without the "ide=nodma".  The "noapic" was
still needed resulting in a very tiny performance reduction.

> I can say that everyone else who's posted about this issue has had an
> AMD motherboard.  It could be the AMD processor, the motherboard and
> chipset, or both.  I just don't know.

I run AMDs almost exclusively myself (three of the four machines at
home are AMDs...one Opteron, a 2000 XP and a 2400XP) and my last laptop
was AMD (new one is a P4).  I prefer AMD over Intel...even the 686
kernels run faster on Athlon than on Intel--the Athlon-optimized kernels
are mondo quick!

> Yes, I manually partitioned the Linux partition (using Partition Magic),
> formatting it with an Ext2 filesystem.  But unfortunately, I'm not even
> getting close to the point where the HDD becomes an issue.
> 
> How is Fedora Core 2 as an OS?  Maybe I should try installing that
> instead.

I use both FC1 and FC2.  We have a number of customers on FC1 and my
18-box mail system (3 outgoing SMTP, 2 incoming SMTP, 8 POP, 2 IMAP, 2
Webmail, 2 LDAP and 2 PostgreSQL) doing a total of about 20M
messages/day) are all FC1.  I also have no hesitation in recommending
FC1 for clients with fairly pedestrian hardware.

FC2 works well, but due to the "newness" of the 2.6 kernel you may have
issues finding drivers for weird hardware.  Some applications are also
not available as binary RPMs for it.  If you're willing to go the extra
bit by rebuilding the apps from tarballs and such, FC2 is a good bet.

Be aware that there are lots of differences between the 2.4 kernels
that you're familiar with and the 2.6 kernel.  Modules are different,
/etc/modules.conf becomes /etc/modprobe.conf, the kernel build procedure
is different (easier, but different), other things.  Also FC2 doesn't
replaces the old XFree86 X-Window system with the XOrg implementation.
There are other things, but you'll get the hang of them.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-           grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines           -
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