Remember me? Kernal Panic

curtludwig · posted: 2008-09-12 17:06

I'd posted back in the day (a year ago) about having trouble running M7 on my old 800Mhz machine. Today I downloaded 7.5 and have the same issue, you can see the old post
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Here's some highlights as a refresher:

Tyan Thunderbolt 440GX chipset, dual 800Mhz PII, 256MB, 18GB SCSI drive on an Adaptec 7896. I install and try to boot from the HD I get:"Kernael panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)"

I've gotten this error on all versions of antiX I've tried (6.5, 7 and now 7.5) I also get it with Mepis 7 but interestingly not with Ubuntu 6...

Then anticapitalista asked

Using the livecd, can you navigate to /mnt/hda (or where your installed antiX-M7 is)/etc/fstab and post it here. Also the same for the boot/grub/menu.lst

Its a SCSI harddrive remember so its /sda

# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <filesystem> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda5 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0

Thanks!

-Curt

anticapitalista · posted: 2008-09-12 21:28

What does the Ubuntu fstab and /boot/menu.lst look like?
Can you see obvious differences that may help you boot antiX?

eriefisher · posted: 2008-09-12 23:42

My guess.

There is some kind of issue with the scsi drives, maybe a driver issue or a recognition problem. Ubuntu may have overcome this by using uuid's by default. Not sure if the 6.... series had moved to uuid's yet though?

curtludwig · posted: 2008-09-17 17:25

anticapitalista wrote:What does the Ubuntu fstab and /boot/menu.lst look like?
Can you see obvious differences that may help you boot antiX?

/boot/menu.lst = /boot/grub/menu.lst ?

timeout 15
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1

gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title MEPIS at sda1, newest kernel
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=791 resume=/dev/sda5
boot

title MEPIS at sda1, previous kernel (if any)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz.old root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=791 resume=/dev/sda5
boot

title MEPIS at sda1, kernel 2.6.22-1-mepis-smp
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-1-mepis-smp root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=791 resume=/dev/sda5
boot

title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

I'll need help with Ubuntu fstab but I realized I made a mistake before when I posted /mnt/sda1/etc/fstab, it actually reads:

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/sda5 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0

Thanks
-Curt

masinick · posted: 2008-09-17 18:41

Both the file system table (/etc/fstab) and the GRUB boot loader configuration file (/boot/grub/menu.lst) appear to be very ordinary, nothing strange about either one of them. When you use a SCSI disk device it always has the sd naming convention, so that is correct.

Sure seems to be a hardware recognition kind of an issue.

You say that Ubuntu, at least in some versions, works, correct? Out of curiosity, do other Debian based distributions work as well? If not, perhaps there is some hardware support in Ubuntu that has not reached the stock Debian environment.

As an experiment, any chance that you can grab a copy of sidux-2008-03? A Preview release was just announced this week. I wonder if their kernel has the hardware support that you need? As a data point, it would be a good version to try out for comparison. AntiX has the capability of pulling in sidux kernels - but of course, that is only true if you can at least install it initially. By trying out a sidux kernel, perhaps we can figure out if a newer Debian or sidux kernel will have the device support you need or not. If yes, then maybe the version of antiX that is being worked on right now will help you out.

Worth a try to get more data on the source of the problem?

curtludwig · posted: 2008-09-17 19:17

Downloading it right now.
I'd never heard of it before... Won't know anything until lunch time tomorrow.

-Curt

masinick · posted: 2008-09-17 20:48

curtludwig wrote:Downloading it right now.
I'd never heard of it before... Won't know anything until lunch time tomorrow.

-Curt

I still hope that we will be able to figure out a way to get antiX going for you because it is such a great small system, but sidux is a really cool cutting edge distro as well - and anti himself likes it. Maybe if you can get sidux going we can help you figure out what is going wrong and come up with a solution to help you get antiX successfully installed and running too.

dieselbenz · posted: 2008-09-19 01:29

Welcome to a good non-Benz list, grasshopper.

LT Don

curtludwig · posted: 2008-09-19 18:23

masinick wrote:Both the file system table (/etc/fstab) and the GRUB boot loader configuration file (/boot/grub/menu.lst) appear to be very ordinary, nothing strange about either one of them. When you use a SCSI disk device it always has the sd naming convention, so that is correct.

Sure seems to be a hardware recognition kind of an issue.

You say that Ubuntu, at least in some versions, works, correct? Out of curiosity, do other Debian based distributions work as well? If not, perhaps there is some hardware support in Ubuntu that has not reached the stock Debian environment.

As an experiment, any chance that you can grab a copy of sidux-2008-03? A Preview release was just announced this week. I wonder if their kernel has the hardware support that you need? As a data point, it would be a good version to try out for comparison. AntiX has the capability of pulling in sidux kernels - but of course, that is only true if you can at least install it initially. By trying out a sidux kernel, perhaps we can figure out if a newer Debian or sidux kernel will have the device support you need or not. If yes, then maybe the version of antiX that is being worked on right now will help you out.

Worth a try to get more data on the source of the problem?

I was going to reply from the system but its got one of the old type clicker keyboards, drives me crazy, gotta replace that.

Anyway Sidux works perfectly, or it works fine anyway, or it boots fine and goes online anyway. I don't like Konqueror much but it does seem to be working.

So far overall I prefer antiX except that Sidux works.

masinick · posted: 2008-09-22 19:01

If sidux works, that is an indication that the sidux kernel - and perhaps the Ubuntu kernel as well (that worked too, right?) have device support not currently available in the antiX kernel from the SimplyMEPIS project. Hopefully that will be changing soon as antiX acquires a new kernel to handle a wider range of hardware.

Meanwhile, you can add IceWM and/or Fluxbox to sidux, then remove KDE, then change appearance and get something at least approaching antiX. Let us know if you need help with that or you want to go that route or not.

curtludwig · posted: 2008-09-22 22:12

masinick wrote:If sidux works, that is an indication that the sidux kernel - and perhaps the Ubuntu kernel as well (that worked too, right?) have device support not currently available in the antiX kernel from the SimplyMEPIS project. Hopefully that will be changing soon as antiX acquires a new kernel to handle a wider range of hardware.

Meanwhile, you can add IceWM and/or Fluxbox to sidux, then remove KDE, then change appearance and get something at least approaching antiX. Let us know if you need help with that or you want to go that route or not.

That makes sense since Mepis 7 failed in exactly the same way antiX does. Ubuntu 6 worked, I haven't tried a newer version as I really don't like Ubuntu 6.
There was another download available for Sidux, I forget what it was, appeared to be a different window manager...

I'd appreciate a short tutorial on how to swap out KDE...

-Curt

anticapitalista · posted: 2008-09-22 22:25

Curt.
We might be able to get antiX to work still.
As you managed to install it, I guess antiX-M7.5 did work as a livecd.
We might be able to use the information from the sidux install to boot antiX.
Could you post the contents of these 2 sidux files.

/boot/grub/menu.lst
/etc/fstab

What you might want to try is create another partition for antiX to go on and install to.
If you get the same problem ie antiX not booting, you can use the livecd and or the sidux partition to edit the antiX /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst.

I think erie got it right, that you may need to change references of sda to UUID