"Kernel panic - not syncing" after power loss while shutting down KDE

AllSaintsDay · 03-07-2008, 09:54 AM

Yesterday, I went to shut down my machine during some thunderstorms.
KDE was taking a very long time to close, and wouldn't let me get over to any other virtual terminal. The power went out while it was still in that state, and today when I went to power back on, the boot sequence halts on the lines

Code:

No filesystem could mount root, tried:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,2)

I'm still enough of a newbie to not know where to go to find the right information. I'm using Slackware 12.0, right off the CD. So far I've done
cat etc/fstab

Code:

/dev/sda1          swap        swap    defaults         0  0
/dev/sda2          /           ext3    defaults         1  1
/dev/hda1          /fat-a      ntfs    ro               1  0
/dev/hdb1          /fat-b      ntfs    ro               1  0
#/dev/crom         /mnt/cdrom  auto    noauto,owner,ro  0  0
/dev/fd0           /mnt/floppy auto    noauto,owner     0  0
devpts             /dev/pts    devpts  gid=5,mode=620   0  0
proc               /proc       proc    defaults         0  0

and fsck /dev/sda2

Code:

fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
/dev/sda2: clean, 419774/16252928 files, 17214888/32505732 blocks

both off of the boot disk.

Edit: I've booted the machine fine before. I've come across a lot of stories of problems on the first boot, but that isn't what happened here. Slackware has been running for a few weeks now without a reboot, but KDE has only been running for a couple of days.

bigrigdriver · 03-08-2008, 02:24 PM

Quote:

I'm using Slackware 12.0, right off the CD.

Does this mean you are running Slackware from the cd as a liveCD? Or, does it mean you are running a default installation on the hard drive?

If you are running from the hard drive, and the problem began after power loss during a thunderstorm, my first suspecion would be a power spike in conjuction with the power loss. That power spike can damage hardware on the motherboard, especially the RAM chips (been there; done that).

If you have a liveCD of a distro, boot that. If there is a menu of choices before booting the cd, choose to run memtest86 to test your RAM chips. You get a more complete test if the RAM chips aren't in use yet, as they would be if you try to run memtest86 after the livdCD has booted.

If there is a problem with RAM, you will get error messages. You should also run fsck from the liveCD on your Slackware partition to verify the state of the filesystem.

If you have the SystemRescueCD, it has tools to test other hardware as well.

AllSaintsDay · 03-09-2008, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigrigdriver

Or, does it mean you are running a default installation on the hard drive?

This one. I was trying to indicate that I haven't messed with the kernel, lilo, &c since doing a default install that worked fine.

Quote:

That power spike can damage hardware on the motherboard, especially the RAM chips (been there; done that).

I've tried everything I can think of to test for this, but it comes up negative. I ran memtest off of Knoppix, as suggested, and it's gone 15 passes without an error. I've also disabled the Quick POST setting in BIOS, and it's gone through the tests several times without error. Finally, all three bootable discs I have (Slackware DVD, Knoppix DVD, WinXP CD) work fine, while the installation consistently halts on the same error if I forget to boot from CD.

Quote:

You should also run fsck from the liveCD on your Slackware partition to verify the state of the filesystem.

I ran "fsck /dev/sda2" from the Slackware DVD and got a result of "clean" (the full output is in the OP). Is there an option I should use? The manpage didn't list any that seemed helpful for me.

Quote:

If you have the SystemRescueCD, it has tools to test other hardware as well.

At the moment, I don't, but I guess it'll be my next step.

Thanks for the suggestions. Now off to fight with this laptop's burning software to get a SystemRescueCD.