Hello freiends!
now for few day's am faceing a tragic problem: Kernel panic error no my installed RHEL4 machine.
***kernel panic-not syncing:fs/file_table.c:153:spin_is_locked on uninitialized spin lock ce9a5584***
my machine is quite backdated,configuration is: Intel celeron 800MHz,
Microtek 810e MB,256 MB SD Ram,20 GB HDD,52X samsung CDRom,15" colour monitor etc..
after installing, nearabout 1 month its runing well without eny trouble but recently it give me the kernel panic error after booting when the login screen come,and entering UID & password (administrative). One thing, till its runing well in GUI
can enebody help me?

Can you paste me grub.conf or lilo.conf file (depending upon the boot loader) contents? Seems like the boot partition is unhealthy.

Rahul Khare

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-5.EL)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-5.EL.img

You're almost certainly going to have to reinstall as it looks like your hard drive is going bad. I'd reinstall (unless you really need the data -- in that case, you'll need to see if you can mount the drive using the rescue disk and then mount your partitions) and see if it happens again really soon. If it give you trouble during the install or a few days down the road, you almost certainly have a hard drive issue. In that case, you'll need to replace it. Luckily though, disks are very cheap.

Harlin Seritt

I think you are saying that the system boots fine and the applications are running fine, so that's good. I assume that the system is still in the same state as it was?

The problem occurs when your try to login to X at the console.

I read the wiki doc on spinlock and I still don't know what a spinlock is - my programming skills are shining through If someone with programming experience can shed some light on what might be happening it would be good.

I did do a bit of googling for you, and this problem seems to be prevalant in old machines, so this leads me to suspect that it's a kernel design problem that can allow a lock that a spinlock is waiting on disappears for some reason. Of course that is pure speculation from someone who knows nothing about this at all, like I said we need someone who knows something about programming, and kernel programming in paticular.

You might want to try a kernel email list for more info and let us know what the kernel gurus have to say.