Re: Kernel Panic: no init found

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

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).

What model powermac is this again?

Sorry I couldn't be more definitive, and that this process is so frustrating.  Anyone
else?

-Adam P.