[SOLVED] Trying to figure out what is causing a kernel panic on installation (SL and CentOS)

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, definitely feel free to move this thread.

I'm reading a book to try and learn RHEL and RHEL-like distros and hopefully get some RHEL certifications. The book told me that Scientific Linux and CentOS are the best rebuilds of RHEL. So I downloaded the latest live-DVD iso's of both distros. Now I'm trying to install either one of these distros on my laptop. I first tried SL since it seems to be the one referred to the most in the book. I tried booting off the DVD and it gave me this message:

dracut Waring: No root device "live:/dev/disk/by-label/SL-62-x86_64-LiveDVD" found




dracut Warning: Boot has failed. To debug this issue add "rdshell" to the kernel command line. 

dracut Warning: Signal caught!

dracut Warning: Boot has failed. To debug this issue add "rdshell" to the kernel command line. 
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32-220.4.1.e16.x86_64 #1
Call Trace:
 [<ffffffff814ec2ba>] ? panic+0x78/0x143
 [<ffffffff8106ed72>] ? do_exit+0x852/0x860
 [<ffffffff81177e65>] ? fput+0x25/0x30
 [<ffffffff8106edd8>] ? do_group_exit+0x58/0xd0
 [<ffffffff8106ee67>] ? sys_exit_group+0x17/0x20
 [<ffffffff8100b0f2>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
panic occurred, switching back to text console

After this is displayed, the caps lock and scroll lock keys on the laptop blink at a constant rate. At first, I thought the image I wrote to the disk could be bad. I double checked the md5 after download so if the image was bad, it would have most likely gone bad during the transfer to the disk. But, after trying to boot the CentOS installer, I get the same exact error message, right down to those "ffff" codes near the bottom. The caps lock and scroll lock keys flash as well. This occurs regardless of whether or not I choose graphic installer or text-only installer.

This will definitely be a big learning experience for me since I've never experienced a kernel panic before. Through some Googling, I found this thread about deciphering kernel panics. In that post he mentions having a copy of the Linux source code is very useful for debugging. Right now I'm on a computer running Arch Linux. My uname -a:

$ uname -a
Linux rockstar 3.3.2-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Apr 14 09:48:37 CEST 2012 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 7550 Dual-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

Will that still work for debugging even though SL and CentOS are probably using a different kernel? If that does work, he mentions using grep to search for the error. I doubt it's as easy as cat /usr/src/linux-3.3.2-1-ARCH |grep insert_error_here. That just wouldn't make sense. How do I use grep to search for my error messages as indicated?

I thought I'd also mention that Arch Linux installed fine on this laptop. So there's obviously some difference between the two distros that's causing it not to work.

Thanks for any replies!

We will need the hardware particulars of the laptop to help. Make and model at least. Obviously the older kernel does not like some piece of hardware in your machine.

Originally Posted by lamegaptop We will need the hardware particulars of the laptop to help. Make and model at least. Obviously the older kernel does not like some piece of hardware in your machine.

It's a Sager NP5165. It's not a very common laptop. I bought it off of XoticPC and when I go to the link I still have bookmarked it says product not found, so I guess they stopped selling it. Though if you have any specific requests for information, I can definitely do that. I still have working installations of both Windows 7 and Arch Linux on the laptop.

Edit: I'll post the lspci and lsusb from the Arch Linux installation in a sec.

Edit2:

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 [GeForce GT 555M] (rev a1)
03:00.0 USB controller: Texas Instruments Device 8241 (rev 02)
04:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMC250 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 05)
05:00.1 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller (rev 90)
05:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller (rev 90)
05:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller (rev 90)

$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 093b:004b Plextor Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 147e:1001 Upek 
Bus 004 Device 004: ID 5986:0308 Acer, Inc 
Bus 004 Device 005: ID 058f:9254 Alcor Micro Corp. Hub
Bus 004 Device 006: ID 0461:4dbf Primax Electronics, Ltd 
Bus 004 Device 007: ID 046d:c061 Logitech, Inc. RX1500 Laser Mouse
Bus 004 Device 008: ID 10d5:55a2 Uni Class Technology Co., Ltd 2Port KVMSwitcher

Feel free to request any additional info.

The bottom line is some hardware is causing a kernel panic with that 2.6.32 kernel. A quick google for "2.6.32 kernel sager" and I found this. It's Fedora but with the same kernel and nVidia causing the panic. Worth a try.

Add the nomodset and iommu kernel options, perhaps one at a time then both, and see if it helps.

Adding iommu=soft at the end of /boot/grub/grub.conf solved my problem. kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32.9-70.fc12.x86_64 ro root=UUID=4ee473b4-633e-462c-9819-ce1071456b57 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 iommu=soft Reply With Quote

In your case a tab at live cd grub then edit the "linux" or "kernel" line.

When I hit tab, I get one line only and it has neither "linux" nor "kernel" in it.

vmlinuz0 initrd=initrd0.img root=live:CDLABEL=SL-62-x86_64-LiveDVD rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM

I added those options to the end (one at a time, then both like you said), this time it gave a similar kernel panic error, but it didn't give as much information. E.G., it never gave all those fff error codes. The caps lock and num lock lights do blink though.

Woops

No root device "live:/dev/disk/by-label/SL-62-x86_64-LiveDVD" found

Is the CD/DVD label in fact SL-62-x86_64-LiveDVD ?

Have you tried setting BIOS to IDE instead of AHCI?

Originally Posted by lamegaptop Woops Is the CD/DVD label in fact SL-62-x86_64-LiveDVD ?

It looks like it isn't! It looks like the CD label has the last part of the name cut off for some reason. It's name is SL-62-x86_64-Liv. But when I change the CDLABEL part accordingly in the GRUB menu, it still gives me a Kernel panic error.

The suggestions in my old thread weren't working so I made a new thread about this problem. I tried several different ISO burning programs to burn the iso to a DVD but all of them cut off the end. After doing this, I decided I should try to boot the original disk I burned on a different computer. It booted up fine. So now I'm back to square one. How can I get Scientific Linux or CentOS to install on my laptop? I already tried disabling AHCI like was suggested in the previous thread. It gave the same results.

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this is greatly appreciated.

I figured it out. The external optical drive I was booting from was connected to a USB 3.0 port. When I connected it to a 2.0 port, I was able to boot into CentOS. Mods can delete this thread since it contains less information than the old one, which I updated as well.

I figured it out. The external optical drive I was booting from was connected to a USB 3.0 port. When I connected it to a 2.0 port, I was able to boot into CentOS.

Thanks! The USB 3.0/2.0 trick solved my problem.

I noticed there was a flurry of activity on the same problem (or almost) back in March, 2013, and a little in July, 2013, but no resolutions to speak of. So when I saw this, I gave it a shot just in case... Ker-Ching!!!! It worked. And then I remembered that somewhere in my reading there was a statement that support for booting from USB3 devices in Linux isn't until you have a 3.2 kernel. Since available RHEL (and clone) Linux is still 2.6.x, it all kind of popped into place. I had thought it just wouldn't use USB 3 features, but apparently it just plain won't boot off it at all.