While experimenting with kernels and lilo, I got myself into the position of having two kernels panicking differently at boot.

The old 2.2.19 install kernel panics without me being able to see any strange line passing the screen:

VFS: Cannot open root device 00:00
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

The new 2.4.18 kernel panics giving some stranges lines before:

1) modprobe: Can't locate module *
2) [insmod:] Note: /etc/modules.conf is more recent
than /lib/modules/2.4.18-386/modules.dep
3) mount: /dev2/root is not a valid block device
4) warning: can't open /etc/mtab: No such file or directory
5) pivot_root: No such file or directory
6) /sbin/init: cannot open dev/console: no such file
7) Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!

lines 2 and 3 appeared often. Lines 4,5,6 and 7 appear as direct sequence.

The first fail reboot occurred when got rid of commented lines in lilo, and start using compact and a different delay.

Using rescue and boot flops, I tried to regain lilo.conf and run it with chroot, but changes don't seem to have effect, since the 2.4.18 kernel is started at reboot. Also the results of lilo and the appearance of mtab seem to be dependent on the kernel I use.

Current lilo.conf:
lba32
boot=/dev/hda
install=/boot/boot.d
map=/boot/map
delay=20
vga=normal
default=LinuxOLD
image=/vmlinuz
initrd=/initrd.img
label=Linux
read-only
image=/vmlinuz.old
label=LinuxOLD
read-only
optional

I hope I have given enough info to make someone able to tell me what's going wrong here.

Gilion

Kernel panics similar to the first are typically the result of not having the appropriate driver for the root filesystem type loaded at the point it tries to mount it. If it's a stock Debian kernel image though, I'd double check that the initrd= line in lilo.conf points to the right initrd for that particular kernel as incorrect initrd= lines can cause that problem too. It took me two days and two lengthy Debian net-installs over dial-up to figure that out on another system I have here running Debian unstable as it neglected to include the correct initrd= line in it's default lilo.conf file (which combined with the fact the net-installer had a huge problem installing lilo itself as well gave me a lot of fun until I finally figured out was going on and booted the box up with a Gentoo LiveCD and sorted it all out).

I've never seen anything like the second one though so I'm afraid I can even begin to make suggestions on how to fix it.

About the initrd= line:

I noticed all files in root which lilo.conf mentions are in fact links to files in /boot. This lilo.conf is mainly automaticly generated, so I wonder why it uses these links, instead pointing directly to the files? I'll try to create lilo.conf pointing to the actual files at the /boot partition... monday, as my box is offline. Hope it works.

Gilion