Kernel Panic on installation
 

hi,
I am installing a fresh copy of RH7.2 and I get a kernel panic. Here are the last 5 or so lines that are spit out.

(note that I am installing on a freshly fomratted hard drive)

RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
crc errorFreeing initrd memory: 2046K freed
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
cramfs: wrong magic
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:02, iso_blknum=16, block=32
Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 09:02


No one seems to have an answer for me, so any help at all would be awesome.

thanks in advance.

I'm not absolutely certain about this, but here's my guess. RH I know boots the kernel off of the disc using the 'el torrito' standards, and then mounts a bogus root file system on the CD (this I'm not certain of). The problem I'm guessing is probably with the CD as:

isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:02, iso_blknum=16, block=32

isofs_read_super refers to the iso file system on the CD, and a failure to read its superblock, which would make it mountable, so it would seem there is something bongoru with the CD.

Someone else may have a more experienced opinion as thats my educated guess. If you can get another copy of 7.2, try spinning that up...

Cheers,

Finegan

hrm, ok. somewhere to atart anyways :) I am almost done downlaoding the disc 1 iso so i will give it a try.

Worth saying that the same error that I posted occurs on more than one RH7.2 disc 1. (i have 2, and I am dl my third)
And i have had successful installs with one of the RH discs that I have had.

I am using CDRWIN to burn the iso's - DO i need to add any option telling CDRWIN that the iso is going to be a bootable CD ? Maybe thats the problem....

Thanks for the response though ! :)

David

I don't think... okay I'm almost certain that's not it then. If the burned ISO worked fine once, then there's probably nothing wrong with it. This is almost always an all or nothing kind of thing. Is there anything old and wonky about the cdrom you're using? Also, alternatively, you could try a net install. If you have the bandwidth to download the ISO, you have the bandwidth to do the entire installation via a redhat mirror. Have installs gone off on this same machine before without a hitch?

Cheers,

Finegan

To rule out the bad CD/ CDROM part I am about to burn my 3rd copy of RH7.2 and replace the cdrom in that computer with another one. And then give it a shot.

I cant do a net install cause the computer that I am installing red hat on is currently an empty machine. I wiped the hard drive a couple days ago thinking that residual partitions in weird file system types was the cause of my issues.

YOur comments are very appreciated. thanks again finegan.

will keap you posted.
DAvid

Wow, er... you probably don't have to cut that 3rd copy... but if a CDROM swap fixes it, then that's just a bummer.

Oh, and with a net-install, you don't have anything on the Harddrive, that's the brilliant part, you basically get all of the OS that you need to do the installation on 2-3 floppies.

Anyway, Luck

Finegan

Turned out to be my crappy CDROM.... THanks for your comments and help finegan.

such a simple solution to such a head-ache. doh.

Cheers,
David

No problem mate... although the CDRom wouldn't allow to be used for install doesn't mean that it won't work in the crate for normal use though... although it might be zorked. Come to think of it, those errors reminded me a lot of these errors I saw from the smoked CDRoms I had a few old laptops.

Luck,

Finegan

I am having exact same problem ...
 

I am having the exact same problem attempting to run W2K and RH72. Whenever I try to boot linux from the W2K boot loader, the machine just reboots itself. Upon attempting to boot from a floppy I receive the following ...

EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09.02, iso_blknum=16, block=32
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 09.02,

Any ideas? Please help ...

Mild frustrated,

rstnkc

I haven't any experience trying to use the ntloader and Linux. I've always done it the other way around, booting Windows with Lilo. The boot floppy you used I think is the install boot floppy because those errors are complaining about not finding a root file system on the cdrom, hence all that ISO goop. Did you make a Grub boot floppy or Lilo boot disk?

You might want to post this as a new thread being specific about the bootloader, and the entire redhat kernel panic error section. Right now only myself and the other guy originally in this thread have any chance of seeing your query.

Cheers,

Finegan

Kernel panic: VFS: 09:02
 

I am having the same error on an Omnibook 5000. NO version of boot disk will boot ('95 slackware to RH 7.2 & freesco). DOS runs ok, diags show no problem, burn-in = ok. Win 3.11 installs and boots w/o problems. However installs of Win95 or 98 fail at "innitiate Kernel" in the bootlog. O.k., don't flame for mentions of M$, this is useful info. Between 3.11 & 95, the loader changed from win386.exe to vmm32.vxd. My guess is that both of our systems have either a very subtle h/w prob. that escapes diags OR the h/w is somehow slightly non-std and the kernel can't recognize it to access either the hdd, floppy or ramdisk (my current favorite)...prob is that apparently others have found the OB5000 easy to install to. This leaves: subtle hardware prob. My next attempt will be to minimize the hw installed; min. mem, fdd, hdd and all else disabled incl. caches, I/O, pwr mgmt., etc... 09:02 is supposed to relate to Hda1, but the entire hdd subsys has been checked...Any ideas?

One more thing...
 

Forgot to mention: all of the installs mentioned in my prior post except for freesco were attempted in various ways, including copying the install to the HDD and using the appropriate boot floppy...have not tried network, but if freesco can't boot and it is a single-floppy distro designed to run from the fd...Any thoughts? I've found quite a few postings scattered about the net with the same error...none answered though...

Kernel Panic on installation from CD
 

:newbie:
Hi guys,

I got almost the same Kernel Panic but with only the following lines (while installing rh GNU/Linux 7.2 on a notebook):

EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock (does it mean: could not read the installation-system-root-fs)

cramfs: wrong magic (does it mean: installation-system-root-fs have to load into ramdisk (compressed ram fs), failure)

isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:02, iso_blknum=16, block=32 (are these the block #s which are not readable on the CD?)

Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 09:02 (the result: Kernel could not load root-fs, gives up...)

I got the same result while attempting to boot from a floopy which was created from a previous installation (on a Compaq Deskpro - which went smooth from the same set of CDs). I tried it again on the Compaq, works just fine...

-I passed Linux mem=256M at boot: prompt, didn't help.
-no "crc: errorFreeing initrd memory: xxxK"
-The same set of CDs work fine on other systems - media: ok
-The CD ROM drive is ok, as rh GNU/Llinux 7.1 works just fine on this notebook.
-tried disabling power saving feature in BIOS, didn't help.

There's a Win2k (on /dev/hda1). Not that it should make any difference. And the partition I wish to install rh 7.2 is currently FAT32 - but I'm going to be formatting it. So that shouldn't matter, if I understand it right...

In distress, any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks a ton in advance.
-Verb-

Kernel panic update
 

Found the problem; replaced the P120 with a P90 (the next fastest OB5000 cpu board I had handy) and Presto! -No more errors.

...could have been the virtual driving of the hard drive, since the HD worked o.k. from the BIOS, failed upon loading of any 32-bit kernel. Had previously turned off both the L1 and L2 caches, so that was ruled out. CPU had previously passed any test I through at it, yet a swap solved the problem. The only other components on the CPU board (this is on an Omnibook 5000 notebook) are the timer and L2 cache, if any, and the old timer checked out O.K.. Question is, how would a subltle CPU problem cause a virtual HDD driver failure?

Now using the OB as a WAN gateway -converting to a true access point is next. TGIL (Thank God for Linux, duh) !

Good luck on converting you r OB to a tru Access Point.

But I can't seem to understand those differences between rh 7.1 & rh 7.2 that makes the cpu board an issue. I still haven't been able to localize the trouble/pin-point the troublesome component. Any help will be truly appreciated...

-Verb-