From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ray Olszewski Subject: Re: boot problem Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 08:16:11 -0700 Message-ID: <4276443B.6020003@comarre.com> References: <427617F5.1030307@arrakis.es> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <427617F5.1030307@arrakis.es> Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: linux-newbies Andrew wrote: > I have just used the Slackware 'swaret' tool to upgrade from Slackware > 10.0 to 10.1. The result is my system no longer boots properly. Most > attempts to reboot get as far as 'Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k > freed', followed by a 'sh-3.00#' prompt, though on one attempt I got > something like 'kernel panic. attempted to kill init' (I haven't been > able to reproduce this). Where do I begin to sort this mess out? It's difficult to say what your problem is from this sketchy a description, but the likely place to start tracking it down is by looking at your logs. The 'sh-3.00#' prompt at least means the system is throwing you into a shell as root ... probably in single-user mode ... so you should be able to read the logs. But first take a look at whether /etc/inittab was changed by the upgrade. Dropping into single-user mode usually means a problem with init, not the kernel itself ... especially if the kernel makes it to the "freeing memory" step ... and this is the file the controls the operation of the init program. Then see what init scripts were modified by the upgrade. (I forget where Slackware puts them, but look for a line in /etc/inittab similar to this: "si::sysinit:/etc/init.d/rcS". Unless it has changed recently, Slackware uses an old style of init-script organization that can easily get errors incorporated into it through an automated upgrade, and that *may* be all you are seeing. Make sure that whatever top-level init scripts inittab points to ... in the line like the one above and in a series of (probably) six that resemble "l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2" ... are present on the system and executable. Next thing is to look at your logs ... and at the output of "dmesg", if Slackware down't dump that to a logfile during boot/init (some distros do, but I don't know about Slack). It is likely, though not certain, that either the kernel itself, or init by way of syslogd, will be logging a better description of the problem than what is going to the screen. Check your filesystems to make sure that they are a trpe that your kernel can mount. This is unlikely to be a problem, but just might be, for example if you're using ext3 but the kernel supports only ext2. See what "df" reports, and see if the entries in /etc/fstab are reasonable when compared with df's output. The suggestion Chuck made, to install a different kernel, is likely his response to the kernel panic message you say you got on one occasion, and it may do the job for you, or it may be like using a cannonball to sway a fly. Definitely give it a try; there are a lot of things this "mess" *might* be that a kernel change will fix. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs