Machine is a Sony Vaio model PCG-61A14L. Yesterday I backed up the user's home directory and ran cfdisk to change the partition filesystems from ext3 to ext4, then installed 14.2-x86_64. After adding the user and setting up the system to work as before, I ran 'slackpkg update' then upgrade-all.

When done, I cd'd to /boot and ensured the soft links (System.map, config, and vmlinuz) pointed to the proper kernel (generic-4.4.88). Ran 'mkinitrd -c -k 4.4.88 -m ext4 -f ext4 -r /dev/sda1'. Changed pwd to /etc and edited lilo.conf so the proper kernels were made available; ran /sbin/lilo.

Rebooting causes a kernel panic when the generic kernel is selected; the huge kernel boots the system. I thought the panic meant a faulty initrd, but having rebuilt it (twice), that must not be the case.

At what should I look for the reason the generic kernel will not boot? Any diagnostic tests I should run?

The second issue is that xwmconfig is set to load xfce4 both during the installation and afterwards when run as both root and the user. While the xwmconfig display shows xfce4 selected the startx keeps loading KDE. In ~/.bash_profile startx is an alias for startxfce4.

Please suggest either diagnostics for this issue or suggest what I might have missed doing.

The ext4 module also needs jbd2 and mbcache in the initrd.
Boot the huge kernel and run /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh to get an appropriate command for your setup.

xwmconfig is intended to be run from the command line by the user prior to doing startx.

Thank you, allend. The script suggested a line-and-a-half long mkinitrd command which I highlighted and entered at the prompt. It added a bunch of modules and I ran /sbin/lilo again. Trying the generic kernel resulted in a kernel panic again. I could try to copy it all if that would help.

On the desktop display issue, I had run xwmconfig as the user from a console; just did it again. The xwmconfig display had xfce4 (the second line) highlighted so I again clicked the OK button. Booting with the huge kernel still brought up the KDE user login and desktop environment. I think the way to avoid this issue is for me to add the user to sudousers and the wheel group, then allow her to run only 'sudo /sbin/halt' to shut down the laptop when finished. Setting the default runlevel to 3 and having her log in on the console, the type 'startx' should bring up xfce4.

While booting the huge kernel will continue to work it would be much better to be able to boot the generic kernel.

Thanks for the prompt reply,

Rich

Do you have an appropriate stanza in /etc/lilo.conf?
For ease of shutdown, it is better to boot to run level 4 so that kdm can handle shutdown by a normal user, but you need to get things working correctly by booting to run level 3 first.

Does the lilo.conf have line pointing to the initrd in the stanza for the generic kernel? Something like this:

initrd=/boot/initrd.img

My apologies to all: at some point I inadvertently removed the initrd=/boot/initrd.gz line from the generic kernel stanza in lilo.conf. Putting that back in and re-running lilo allows the Sony to boot the generic kernel.

In /etc/inittab I changed the default runlevel back to 3 and added the user to sudo users with permission to shut down the machine after shutting down the X window system. After logging in, running 'startx' brings up xfce4 so there's no longer a KDE issue.

Thank you allend and David for pointing out the obvious that i had missed seeing.

Rich