[Solved] kernel panic not syncing vfs unable to mount root fs
 

I am trying to install Linux mint on a system with 3 drives.
Windows 7 Boot drive is Samsung 950 pro 512gb NVMe M.2 split into 2 partition. This drive is buried beneath my video card, a GTX 970

Second drive is Kingston Sata3 SSD 120gb used for gaming

Third drive is Seagate 2TB NAS ST2000VN000 Spinner and has 64 gb unallocated at the start of the drive, and the rest is my data storage.

The 3rd drive is where I want to install Linux Mint 18.

When I boot I get the Kernel Panic error.

Eventually I will change over to Linux and if there is anything Windows I need I'll use Wine. But for now, I want to run both OSs until I get the hang of Linux Mint.

From what I've seen on my search results, this seems to be related to the disk partitions and grub, but being a newbie I couldn't say for sure.

What might be causing the kernel panic?

thanks

Kernel panic not syncing has to do with timing. It can be due to almost anything. But here is what I would check, in the grub menu press the 'e' key for edit. Change the 'root' parameter in the kernel line to where x is the partition number of the root directory. If you have only on partition for the whole linux installation, then it would be . Then press CTRL+x to boot the system.

It's not clear what exactly you are booting from. You say you "want to install" Mint. Does that mean that you haven't installed it yet? Or have you just installed it and this is your first attempt to boot it by itself? If the latter, then yes, the problem is that the kernel isn't finding the correct root partition (or can't read it for some other reason).

First you need to find out the correct device name for the partition. Most computers have only one hard drive but you have three, so you can expect complications. Boot from the installation CD and look in the folder called /dev. You should see three drives called sda, sdb and sdc. You should also see partitions with names like sda1. You need to find out the name of the partition you have installed to and then get grub to use it. This involves some editing of configuration files, but people here will help you and point you to useful links.

It's also worth finding out what grub is trying to boot from at the moment. If you can post your /boot/grub.cfg file, that would be useful too.

PS. AwesomeMachine may not be correct in suggesting sda1. It's more likely to be sdc1 in your case. But in any case, finding out the correct name for your linux partition is the key step.

I leave the details up to the poster. Otherwise the overall concept is lost. But, yes, it probably is not actually /dev/sda1 that you'll be looking for. It's the root directory of the Linux Mint installation.

Just a footnote, RE: the op, wine is pretty lame compared to virtualbox. In fact, wine has so many problems I consider it unusable. But it's an interesting project, and some people have fun trying to get it to work. Plus, no operating system licenses with wine!

Wine was I had heard of. If it's not the best solution I am happy to try other things. This is all new to me and I'm open to learning new stuff..

Thank you for your swift replies!

Ok, I didn't explain myself very well in my initial post. Please forgive my newbie-ness.

I am booting from a USB that was created using Rufus 2.9 from a Linux Mint x64 Cinnamon v18 ISO. (USB mode; Wont boot UEFI mode on my ASRock Extreme 7+ mobo). When the system starts I press F11 to select my boot device.

I get the initial screen that says it will auto start in 10 seconds.

Once the "LiveCD" version (Is that what it is called?), attempts to start I get the kernel panic immediately.

I have not installed Mint. I have not created any partitions for Mint. I simply have 64gb of unallocated space at the start of my 3rd Drive (SDA3?) ready to be used for the install. The other 1.75TB of space on that drive is used for data storage.

The drives are:

(SDA1?) 950 pro 512GB SSD NVMe M.2 x4 - C: 96GB - Windows 7 & F: 380GB - Working (Video encoding, programming, email storage etc)
(SDA2?) Kingston 120GB SSD AHCI SATA3 - D: Games
(SDA3?) Seagate ST2000VN000 SATA3 spinner E: 1.75TB - Storage; 64GB unallocated.

Are you suggesting I should remove all other drives before attempting to install Linux?

There could be something wrong with your CDROM image. It's normal to put these images on USB drives nowadays, but I've never heard of an installation kernel panicking either from a CD or from USB. These kernels boot to a ram disk so they should work regardless of the local disk setup.

Did you check the md5sum of the image before transferring it to the USB drive?

If you can't get this one to boot, it's really worth downloading and trying out a different image.

I have come across kernel panics during boot, with either a cd or a usb. It's not that unusual. I simply tried using other methods or simply starting all over again - writing the image on the usb stick and so on. You should also check the linux mint iso. Maybe there's something wrong with it, I don't know?

Sometimes the image might not be correctly written on the usb stick, so you just have to try again. Or try another image, as hazel says.

Ok, I will grab a different USB stick and a new image and try again. And even an older Rufus version. I'll report back what happens.

thanks

OK, that worked. Re-downloaded the image, and used universal USB installer instead of Rufus to prepare the USB image, and it booted and installed fine.
thanks