kernel panic: no init found
 

got this error on bootup the other day:

kernel panic: no init found

So i boot into rescue mode to try and fix lilo, but how do i mount the raid5 scsi drives? does rescue mode support raid? Never really played around with raid a lot. any help concerning mounting raid drives in rescue mode would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Here is what you can do ... tryng to recollect what I had done 2 years ago ....

Use a boot floppy,
Select the option that allows to provide additional drivers
linux: linux expert ???? or ....
provide your scsi driver disk when prompted.....
Move over to vty2

Get the idea?

Sorry I will need more time to get the whole thing back ... but the steps go something like what I have jotted above.

All the best.

In your boot loader try init = 3 or init = 5. What this does (I think) it runs one of your rc level scripts.

Example:

linux init = 3

or

linux init = 5

5 is gui in some distributions. In slackware its 4 (info that I from this forum).

If that doesn't work, you may need to recompile your kernel and give support for your SCSI controller. You can either compile your controller as a module or have it built-in. If you have compiled it as a module you have to run a ram disk image utility against your re-compiled kernel. Then copy both the kernel and the image to /boot. Next edit your boot loader configuration file. If you have an ram disk image don't forget to add ram disk size to suite your disk image file.

is your initrd in the right place?

check /boot/ for your initrd along with your vmlinuz, then make sure they match in your lilo/grub.conf

this would be all good if i could just mount the drives...do i need to execute "raidstart" and then try and mount /dev/sda to /foo?

Thanks for all the input so far.

i will have to try the init=3 option. i have tried initrd= and different root partitions, but to no avail. i really think the initrd just needs to be rebuilt, but i can't even mount the drives.