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View Full Version : Can't load FC7 from GRUB after a fresh install - Kernel panic?


Daldous
2007-06-17, 05:38 AM CDT
Ahoy gentlepeople, I'm having some trouble with my Fedora Core 7 installation and I'm hoping ya'll can resolve it.

Once I get past GRUB bootload (selecting Fedora), I get prompted with the following text:

/* Linux text */
Uncompressing Linux ... ok booting the kernel
Red Hat nash 6.0.9 starting
Device-mapper: table 253:0 : linear : dm-linear : dev lookup failed
Device-mapper: reload ioctr failed: Invalid argument
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
Setuproot: moving /dev failed : No such file or directory
Setuproot: error mounting /proc : No such file or directory
Setuproot: error mounting /sys : No such file or directory
Switchroot: mount failed: Noo such file or directory

Kernel panic - not syncing : Attempted to kill init!

/* End Linux text */

Bit more to the story:

I have two hard disks. The second one is easy - it is formatted in NTFS and stores files. I did not install any operating systems on it.
Now the first hard disk. A couple of days ago, I completely formatted it and installed Windows XP on a partition without trouble. The partition was about half of the HD size - 38 GB.
Just this morning, I've installed FC7 on the remaining free space on that HD. I had to do a custom setup for partitions, chose my partition size to be 36300 MB (almost all of the free space) and I think I named this partition "/" - without the quotes. Just a single forward slash.
Right on, after the partition stuff, it copied the files and told me to reboot. Right after reboot, I see GRUB, it counts down, and starts booting Fedora. And right then, it spits out the text above. I've tried restarting and I always get the same problem.
I can load Windows from Grub just fine (it's what I'm typing this with right now).

Anyways, be happy to provide you with any info you may want. Thanks.

lmo
2007-06-17, 07:23 AM CDT
FC7 kernel config introduces a discrepency in drive order among installer/grub/kernel on systems with ide and sata drives. At least this happens on older (pre-sata) motherboards with add-on sata controllers.

Among other config changes,
# CONFIG_IDE is not set

On a such a system with one ide drive and one sata drive,
Grub sees
0 - IDE drive
1 - SATA drive

F7 Live CD installer sees same order as grub and it claims that
/dev/sda - IDE drive
/dev/sdb - SATA drive

After installation,
Once bootstrap has begun, the system sees
/dev/sda - SATA drive
/dev/sdb - IDE drive

I don't know if that is what is causing these kernel panics after a fresh install for everybody else, but that is what caused kernel panics after a fresh install for me.

Checklist
- If there are both IDE and SATA drives in the system the drive order may flip-flop after the installation.
- All hard drives attached to the system at install time should be attached at boot time because sata drives seem to be numbered according to what is on-line (like grub does).
- /etc/fstab may need to be corrected according to the drive names at boot time rather than the drive names at install time
- rebuild the initrd may be necessary -- It was for me.

Daldous
2007-06-17, 05:42 PM CDT
Nope, that's not working out. How can I uninstall this borken Fedora? How can i wipe the partition it's have made?