Bug#315923: Kernel panic after Sarge installation on Dell with SATA drive
Package: install
Version: debian-31r0a-i386-binary-1.iso
Severity: critical
I attempted to install Sarge (2.6.8-2-686) today on a Dell
Dimension 8400 desktop. Upon reboot after installation,
there was a kernel panic with the following error messages:
pivot_root: No such file or directory
/sbin/init: 432: cannot open dev/console: No such file
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!
Just before this, the messages indicate that the kernel has found
the hard disk (Serial ATA Maxtor 6Y160M0):
scsi0: ata_piix
Using anticipatory io scheduler
[drive info]
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0xFFA8 irq 15
and so on (I am typing this by hand, since the machine then
crashed and there are no logs).
By replacing "hda" with "sda" in the following line in
/boot/grub/menu.lst, I was able to prevent the panic:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686 root=/dev/hda6 ro
The boot then failed when it tried to fsck the swap and
remaining ext3 partitions until I made similar replacements
of "hda" with "sda" in /etc/fstab. This allowed the boot
process to finish, but then the kernel would not recognize
the cdrom drive.
This may be related to bugs #299478 and #285981.
Other people have described this problem here:
http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=1094
The same problem appears here:
http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianInstallerBrokenThings
without attribution or a bug reference.
Everett Lipman
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