Help Please! Can Install, but not boot Linux...
 

I apologise if you are not allowed to post in more than one category,
I have used Linux for many years, since 1997. I have converted a friend of mine to Linux awhile back. He just upgraded his computer and wants me to install Linux again for him. He has a brand new computer but still has his old hard drive along with a brand new Maxtor hard drive. In Windows the old hard drive is configured as the "F" drive. It looks like the old hard drive is an IDE type, it has a grey flat ribbon cable attatching it to the motherboard (915g Combo) The new hard drive, where he has his latest install of XP and all of his wifes files is a different type of drive, it has an orange cable attatched to it, I think it says Serial ATA and it is connected to the motherboard also. there is also a connector of some type with red,black and yellow wires connecting the two hard drives together. Is this a Raid? When I go into the Bios there is an option for boot sequence, besides the floppy and two cd drives of, HDD: Pm-Maxtor and Raid: WDC. I have managed to install both Suse 9.1 and Mandrake 2005 Le, the install goes flawlessly, but when I try to boot into the install, (Windows boots by the way), I get the following error message: Kernel Panic, not syncing: attempting to kill init
Can someone please help me?? I've tried messing around with the Bios settings, but not sure what the problem is............

Whenever I get that error, it usually means that I have set the bootloader to boot to the wrong partition.

For example, I have 3 partitions and use Lilo. /boot is on hda1, /swap is on hda2 and / is on hda3. I have to set Lilo to boot from hda3 otherwise it won't see the kernel.

I'd suggest booting from a rescue disk (disk 1 or Knoppix or similar) and reconfiguring your boot loader.

Oh, and welcome to LQ :D

What I did when I setup to boot off two different hard drives (Windows XP and Fedora Core 4) is made sure and use Grub as my bootloader. Though the new one is a pain because you only have three seconds to enter the boot selection screen. To me it sounds like you got a bad kernel, so I would also try the rescue disk of some sort, or Live CD. Or Fedora, I haven't had any install problems with it... good luck!

Thanks for the welcome, I appreciate it,
I tried booting Knoppix and get the following error:
Init: Panic: Segmentation violation at 0x804ec92!

By the way I can load the Suse 9.1 Livecd, but I can't mount any other partitions, they don't show up.

If you can see somehow your /boot/grub/grub.conf, or /boot/grub/menu.lst or /etc/grub.conf,

Paste it here then I can help you.

I have disconnected the old drive from the motherboard and am trying an install on the new ATA Maxtor HD. Suse 9.2 seems to install, most other Distro's give back a kernel panic when attempting to install, is there a problem with this ATA Maxtor HD and Linux??

I installed Suse 9.2 the grub file looked fine, on first boot I still get
Kernel panic : Attempted to kill init!


weird!

Seems like a kernel SATA support problem. Try a distro less than a year old. Suse 9.3? Fedora 4? Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog?

Thanks I've tried Suse 9.3 with the same results.
I just went into rescue mode and typed fdisk -l
/dev/sda1 * (boot) 1 3827 NTFS
/dev/sda2 3828 3957 swap
/dev/sda3 3958 9724 Linux


Shouldn't the * for boot be under sda3?

actually I tried to install Suse 9.3, but after the first install screen comes up and you select install, it goes black...........