Hello to all,

Firstly, I have been using Linux now, both Fedora and Ubuntu, for around 2 months so not a complete newbie.

I have decided to compile Gentoo onto the laptopo instead, I have done all the compiling using Ubuntu Live CD and everything is ready and waiting.

I have also built my Kernel. HOWEVER, when I boot the laptop goes into a Kernel Panic - Not Syncing: No Init Found.

Here is a copy of my grub.conf which I made myself.

default=0
timeout=10
title Gentoo
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1

What could be wrong?

Thanks,
Gentoo-Gav

here is some other information in case it helps.

This is my ls -l output (not sure if it will help)

ubuntu boot # ls -l
total 4780
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 2009-04-25 06:30 boot -> .
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 69789 2009-04-25 17:32 config-2.6.29-gentoo-r1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-04-25 18:43 grub
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1687044 2009-04-25 17:32 System.map-2.6.29-gentoo-r1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 2009-04-25 18:46 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.29-gentoo-r1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3114240 2009-04-25 17:32 vmlinuz-2.6.29-gentoo-r1

And my mount

ubuntu boot # mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
none on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
/dev/scd0 on /cdrom type iso9660 (ro,noatime)
/dev/loop0 on /rofs type squashfs (ro,noatime)
tmpfs on /cow type tmpfs (rw,noatime,mode=755)
aufs on / type aufs (rw,noatime,si=a1fabae8a6182e24,xino=/cow/.aufs.xino,br:/cow=rw:/rofs=rr)
aufs on /dev/.static/dev type aufs (rw,noatime,si=a1fabae8a6182e24,xino=/cow/.aufs.xino,br:/cow=rw:/rofs=rr)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=755)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/ubuntu/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user_id=999,group_id=999)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=continue,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/stealth1-usr on /usr type ext3 (rw,errors=continue,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/stealth1-var on /var type ext3 (rw,errors=continue,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/stealth1-tmp on /tmp type ext3 (rw,errors=continue,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/stealth1-portage on /usr/portage type ext3 (rw,errors=continue,data=ordered)
none on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)

add enforcing=0 to kernel line, like this and see if it works.

unfortunately this did not work.

The same results were experienced

My guess is for some reason initrd was not installed or is just not found.... but the Not Syncing error is terribly generic so it's hard to hazard guesses here. If you can mount the hard drive with another distro you maybe able to check if init is correctly installed... unfortantly I do not know gentoo however, I think other distributions have an initrd declaration in grub... not sure if it's required or not but it could be that, that appears to be missing...

Gentoo-Gav:

With 3GB of RAM I believe you do not need an initrd to boot your gentoo. The error you posted implies that grub doesn't see your gentoo system kernel. Do these:

--first try reinstall Gentoo into its partition (reformat this partition if possible; avoid overwriting old system files) allowing it to modify automatically the grub entries while installing. Find out if Gentoo runs on reboot.

--if above solution doesn't work then you have to recompile your linux kernel for gentoo and closely study your grub/menu.lst entries if the gentoo kernel is accurately pointed to at boot time.

hope this helps.

Goodluck.

Did you use genkernel to build the kernel ?

Did you build a custom kernel or did you minimize the kernel options ?
If you built a custom kernel, did you enable an initrd / Initial Ram system support ?

Hello,

Thanks for the help so far....

The Kernel was manually built by me and a friend.

In response to re-partitioning, I have been following the guides of a friend, how to I do this "without" losing everything I have built and compiled so far (it has taken 2 days lol).

If it helps I have a Samsung R710 laptop.

Gav

Did you enable an initrd / Initial Ram system support in your kernel config ?

Im not sure, my friend did it over ssh.

Is there anyway to tell?

# grep -i initrd /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=y
# grep -i dev_ram /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_COUNT=16
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_SIZE=8192

we may be making progress..

ubuntu / # grep -i initrd /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD is not set

also....

ubuntu / # grep -i dev_ram /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_COUNT=16
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_SIZE=16384

OK. So the kernel is not build with initramfs.
That is fine.

Is EXT3 support built into the kernel or is it modular ?

see below (thanks for sticking with this)

ubuntu grub # grep -i ext3 /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_EXT3_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_XATTR=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_SECURITY=y
ubuntu grub #