Re: Kernel Panic: no init found

[Aaron Davies <agd12@columbia.edu>]

Adam C Powell IV wrote:
> 
> Aaron Davies wrote:
> 
> > Adam C Powell IV wrote:
> > >
> > > When you boot, does the "Partition check" for that drive list your partition?
> > > Later, does it say something like "Mounting root partition read-only"?  Does it
> > > add the swap partition successfully?
> >
> > OK, I don't know how to pause the boot process, so I can only give you
> > the last screen before the crash. It looks at my IDE devices, the
> > floppy, and the SCSI bus, then this follows:
> >
> > Partition check:
> >  sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 sda5 sda6 (root on 5)
> >  hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 hda5 hda6
> > VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
> > Freeing unused kernel memory: 180k init 32k prep
> > Kernel panic: no init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel.
> > Rebooting in 180 seconds..
> 
> Looks good to me.
> 
> > I don't see anything about adding the swap partition.
> 
> Okay, that must be done after init is started.  (Silly me to think it came before.)
> 
> > > When you boot with the ramdisk, you should be able to mount your existing Linux
> > > partition(s).  Then you can use alt-F2 to switch to a different console and open
> > > a shell (and switch back to the install console with alt-F1).  "df" will verify
> > > that the partitions are where you say they are (your installed root partition
> > > should be mounted as /target/).
> >
> > This works fine, /dev/sda5 is /target.
> >
> > > Then do "ls target/sbin" and you should see init.  It shouldn't be necessary to
> > > pass an "init=" parameter.
> >
> > This works too, /target/sbin/init is there.
> 
> Hmm...  AFAIK, the installed kernel is the same as the one on the rescue floppy, so
> if the rescue floppy sees /dev/sda5 then the installed kernel should too.
> 
> The only other thing I can think of is a missing or incorrect /dev entry, but this
> should give an error earlier, while trying to mount root readonly.  Just to make
> sure, it might be worth booting in the rescue floppy, mounting existing partition(s),
> and doing "ls -l /target/dev/sda5".  Please report the result to the list, I don't
> know what the major/minor numbers should be (I'm away from my mac for a couple of
> weeks).

OK, I get the following:

brw-rw----    1 root     8,   5 Jul 20 01:06 /target/dev/sda5

> What model powermac is this again?

Beige G3/300.
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