Kernel Panic after install [SOLVED]

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djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 5:04 pm

Working on my first PPC gentoo install on a B&W G3, and the problems just seem to keep piling up.

I got through the handbook successfully, all the way to the stage where you reboot the new system. Unfortunately, this is where the problems start. On reboot, I get a kernel panic, with the stated reason being that the boot loader cannot find the root partition on /dev/hdc4.

The live CD reads the hard disk as hdc and the optical drive as hda, so I assumed the installed system would too, but this is apparently not true. In x86-land, I'd just reboot with the live CD, chroot in, edit the bootloader config to point to /dev/hda* and try it that way. Unfortunately, yaboot doesn't seem to like playing that way.

After I made my edits, here's the error I get when I try to use ybin to update the bootloader:

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livecd / # ybin -v
ybin: Finding OpenFirmware device path to `/dev/hda2'...
ofpath: Unable to determine sysfs mountpoint
ybin: Unable to find OpenFirmware path for boot=/dev/hda2
ybin: Please add ofboot=<path> where <path> is the OpenFirmware path to /dev/hda2 to /etc/yaboot.conf

I get the same error if I try to edit the file back to using /dev/hdc* and run ybin.

So I've got to come to you PPC folks again and ask another newbie question that probably has a retardedly simple answer. How do I solve this little issue? I can't seem to update the yaboot.conf file in the chroot, but I get a kernel panic with it as-is, so I can't boot the system that way. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 8:47 pm

I copied down the kernel panic error in the hopes that it might help to isolate and solve this problem.

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VFS: Cannot open root device "hdc4" or unknown-block (0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)

Again, any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

*edit* Here's the contents of /etc/yaboot.conf

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## yaboot.conf generated by yabootconfig 1.0.8
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ

boot=/dev/hdc2
device=/pci@80000000/pci-bridge@d/pci-ata@1/@0/disk@0:
partition=4
root=/dev/hdc4
defaultos=Linux
timeout=30
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot

image=/boot/kernel-2.6.12-gentoo-r10
        label=Linux
        read-only

JoseJX · Post by **JoseJX** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:46 pm

This is a common problem, see these posts for more info. It's just a kernel mis-configuration:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-39 ... panic.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-38 ... panic.html

There's more if these don't help, search the PPC forum for panic. Also, if you want to be sure your kernel has at least the basics, type

Code: Select all

make defconfig

before configuring the kernel, it'll set up some reasonable defaults.

dmwilcox · Post by **dmwilcox** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:49 pm

up at the top of the yaboot.conf file make sure

ofboot=<your apple boot block in OF path>

eg: hd:2 if your boot block is on the second partition

next, you need to make sure the root partition is specified generically so use:

partition = 5
where 5 is rather the correct partition number on the disk

next stop is in the boot block for a particular linux kernel
image=/boot/blah
label=blah
root=/dev/hda5 (or whatever linux will call your root partition)
partition=5 (this is likely crucial for your case)
read-only

at the bottom of the file, all the options are enabled
if you need to start macosx for example it needs to be in OF path
macosx=hd:6

enableofboot (obviously needs to be uncommented)

hope that works

djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:25 am

Did a kernel reconfig and recompile (used make defconfig first, never knew about that before..thanks), and then did a fresh yabootconfig, but still got the same kernel panic message.

I tried editing the yaboot.conf file to include the lines above, but that also seemed to have no effect, as the same kernel panic message was displayed.

Any other thoughts?

JoseJX · Post by **JoseJX** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:32 am

Did you check to make sure that your IDE device is actually included in the kernel? In the text before the panic, does it show the drive being found? Can you provide your kernel config on a webspace somewhere so we can look at it?

djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 1:59 am

I'll have to go make that Mac do the kernel panic again to check whether an IDE device loads successfully.

Until then, here is the pertinent section of the kernel config

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# ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
#
CONFIG_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y

#
# Please see Documentation/ide.txt for help/info on IDE drives
#
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_SATA is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y
# CONFIG_IDEDISK_MULTI_MODE is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDECD=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDETAPE is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEFLOPPY is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI=y
# CONFIG_IDE_TASK_IOCTL is not set

#
# IDE chipset support/bugfixes
#
CONFIG_IDE_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEPCI=y
CONFIG_IDEPCI_SHARE_IRQ=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_OFFBOARD is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_GENERIC=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_OPTI621 is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SL82C105=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_FORCED is not set
CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y
# CONFIG_IDEDMA_ONLYDISK is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_AEC62XX is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ALI15X3 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_AMD74XX is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CMD64X=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_TRIFLEX is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CY82C693 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CS5520 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CS5530 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HPT34X is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HPT366 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SC1200 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IT821X is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_NS87415 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC202XX_OLD is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC202XX_NEW is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SVWKS is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIIMAGE is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SLC90E66 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_TRM290 is not set
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_VIA82CXXX is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_PMAC=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_PMAC_ATA100FIRST=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PMAC=y
# CONFIG_IDE_ARM is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y
# CONFIG_IDEDMA_IVB is not set
CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HD is not set

JoseJX · Post by **JoseJX** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:14 am

This looks okay, what about Mac partition support?

djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:14 am

Checked the boot message on the G3, was not able to see anything about hard drives, but I did see something about the detection of the IDE zip drive being detected, so I think the IDE controller is working.

Here's the partitions section of the config:

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# Partition Types
#
CONFIG_PARTITION_ADVANCED=y
# CONFIG_ACORN_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_OSF_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_AMIGA_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_ATARI_PARTITION is not set
CONFIG_MAC_PARTITION=y
CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION=y
# CONFIG_BSD_DISKLABEL is not set
# CONFIG_MINIX_SUBPARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_SOLARIS_X86_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_UNIXWARE_DISKLABEL is not set
# CONFIG_LDM_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_SGI_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_ULTRIX_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_SUN_PARTITION is not set
# CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION is not set

JoseJX · Post by **JoseJX** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:29 am

Okay, that looks fine too. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the drives are being detected in a different order than the liveCD (resulting in hdc being hda etc.), which is why I wanted you to check to make sure the IDE controller is loading correctly.

djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 8:03 am

Well, I can try booting it and watching as carefully as I can to see if I can catch it as it rolls across the screen.

If that was what was going wrong, how would I go about fixing it? To my knowledge, bootloaders verify the path to kernel during the update phase after editing, at least lilo and yaboot seem to.

If I change the yaboot.conf file to reflect a different hard drive designation, it won't update successfully. I've tried with no success so far.

Is there some way to specify the first HDD detected, regardless of it's name?

djpenguin · Post by **djpenguin** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:31 pm

You were correct, the HDD was being detected as hda, the CDROM as hde, and the zip drive as hdf

Before I rebooted to check this, I had edited the yaboot.conf again (more on that in a minute). Upon reboot, I saw the IDE-related messages then, much to my astonishment the kernel booted and dumped to a maintenance console when it hit the misconfigured fstab. From the maintenance console, I corrected the fstab and the yaboot.conf to reflect the proper device naming scheme, updated yaboot, then rebooted again.

Success!

Here is the final revision of the yaboot.conf file that allows the system to boot normally:

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ofboot=hd:2
boot=/dev/hda2
#device=/pci@80000000/pci-bridge@d/pci-ata@1/@0/disk@0:
device=hd:
partition=4
#root=/dev/hdc4
timeout=30
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot

image=/boot/kernel-2.6.12-gentoo-r10
        label=Linux
        root=/dev/hda4
        partition=4
        read-only

enableofboot
enablecdboot

Thanks for all the assistance and replies. I look forward to contributing a little more to this forum when I get the hang of the PPC stuff.

Kernel Panic after install [SOLVED]

Kernel Panic after install [SOLVED]

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