Kernel Panic on Boot (WinXP + Slackware 10.1, Dell 8400)
I've a dual-boot system with WinXP (SP2, all current security updates, rarely used) and Slackware 10.1 (kernel 2.4.29) installed on a SATA drive that has been running just fine since last November. The system has a second, IDE, disk with Slackware 10.1 installed (kernel 2.4.29) that I'm running on now.
After booting WinXP, shutting down, and booting Linux the system started loading (it reads the kernel from /boot) and kernel panics when it begins checking file systems with the message "FAT: Bogus logical sector size 0" followed by a kernel panic message. There is a FAT partition on the drive used by PartitionMagic; that's followed by NTFS for WinXP, and that's followed by the Linux partitions if any of that is relevant. Booting to the IDE, I can mount some of the Linux partitions on the SATA disk, others cause a kernel panic as above -- attempting to reiserfsck those unmountable partitions results in the same. The only partition I care about is /home (the others are either distribution installations or add-on's that I have source for). This sounds an awful like WinXP pooped on the partition table or the MBR (although WinXP boots and runs just fine and Linux does start up), but I don't know what to do from here to try to get Linux back (I couldn't care less about getting WinXP back except for having to reinstall the bloody thing, reinstall SP2, then sit though hundreds of "security updates"). I do have a partition map, I have no idea if or how to edit the partition table or do something else to attempt to fix this. Is there a way? |
First, the error "FAT: Bogus logical sector size 0" might be because
when the kernel is booting, it doesn't know the filesystem type of the root fs, so it tries to mount the root device using all of the compiled-in fs drivers, in the order they are listed in fs/Makefile.in. The problem is in the kernel panic, so could you post more of your boot message, including the panic error message? It's available in /var/log/messages(.x) where x is a number value. How long has your box been setup and running this way? Have you recently installed Slackware on another drive? Have you recently changed the MBR? Where is LiLO installed? Please post the output of: /etc/lilo.conf /etc/fstab /sbin/fdisk -l While you are booted this way, post the output of "mount" And why do you have a partition to use Partition Magic? |
I may not have explained properly, but I cannot get at the root or var partitions on the SATA disk drive -- best I can do is this from the boot error:
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000 printing eip: *pde - 00000000 Oops: 0000 [#1] Modules linked in: (a list of modules) CPU: 0 EIP: 0060:[<f926c34f>] Not tainted VLI EFLAGS: 00010202 (2.6.10) EIP is at ata_to_sense_error+0x4f/0x390 [libata] I'm running on a second IDE drive that I've used for development and testing (so as not to mess up the SATA) and I've tried to mount the partitions on the SATA drive to the IDE so I can recover things from it -- I get pretty much the same message above trying to mount a SATA partition to the IDE as when the SATA is attempting to boot. The odd thing is that I can mount (and use) a couple of the SATA partitions but others cause the kernel panic. In particular, the root partition and the var partition so I can't get at the messages or anything in those. The two drives have nothing to do with one another -- I change the boot sequence in the bios to boot from one or from the other. Effectively, I have two separate systems, one dual boot WinXP and Slackware on a SATA drive, the second Slackware only on an IDE drive. The box has been set up and running this way; i.e., dual-boot WinXP and Slackware 10.1 on the SATA drive since March of this year, when Slackware 10.1 was released at the end of February. The second drive, the IDE has had Slackware 10.1 installed and running since last November, but that installation has been kept pretty much stock and untouched for months. The MBR on the SATA has not been changed (by me anyway) since March when Lilo was written to it during Slackware installation. I can't post /etc/lilo.conf or /etc/fstab from the SATA drive (I can't get to that partition without a kernel panic). To be really, really clear, if I attempt to boot from the SATA drive or attempt to mount the root partition of the SATA drive on the IDE drive I get the kernel panic. Partition Magic wanted a small (32K or so) FAT partition at the beginning of the SATA disk for some reason or other. I don't know why, but I know that it did not want to install without it -- that was back in November and it's just been sitting there ever since. What really strikes me as odd is that WinXP boots and runs (apparently) just fine and that I can mount some partitions from the SATA drive with no problems. That just doesn't make sense to me; why some and not others unless the partition table is messed up (at least I think the partition table is in track 0, I could be wrong about that). I'm at a loss. |
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