Kernel Panic after install [SOLVED]

djpenguin · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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:

djpenguin · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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

JoseJX · Developer Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2620

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

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-392788-highlight-panic.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-383609-highlight-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

dmwilcox · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Cali

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 · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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 · Developer Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2620

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?
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djpenguin · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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

JoseJX · Developer Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2620

This looks okay, what about Mac partition support?
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djpenguin · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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:

JoseJX · Developer Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2620

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.
_________________
Gentoo PPC FAQ: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml

djpenguin · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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 · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 386

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: