Weird Kernel Panic and boot error
 

Well I've been trying to get kernel 2.6.x working on my slackware with no success. I first tried 2.6.7, and now im trying 2.6.10, I finally found a way to get it to show me the boot screen (i got blankscreens on all of them) I even once got it to boot full (let me login and get into X) but i was doing this on a blank screen. Now i finally get some progress and i get this:

Any help?

The blank screen thing is often caused by forgetting to compile frame buffer support into the kernel. If your LILO is telling the kernel to boot with a non-standard graphics mode (VGA=791, for example), and there's no framebuffer, you'll get black. Try booting with "Linux VGA=normal" at the LILO prompt. If you're using a bitmap, hit [tab] and it'll show you the prompt where you can type.


As for the panic, I can't give you a 100% on it because I've never seen it. My best guess would be that you either didn't choose the CPU at compile time, or you chose the wrong CPU. I could very easily be wrong on that, btw, because as far as I know, the default kernel option on 2.6 is '486, which *should* be compatible with any x86-based system (Intel or AMD).

Next guess would be motherboard/chipset settings. I don't really have enough info at the moment to tell for sure.


Could you post a little more detail about your computer's configuration? CPU, motherboard, how you're compiling the kernel, any options you're choosing on the kernel that you think might be relevant?

Well by default my Subsystem architechture was set to Pentium 4/etc/etc and i thought it was ok.

I have a Dell 4600
P4 w/ HT
2 SATA Hard Drives (the main reason I need to 2.6 kernel)
Intel 865G (not really sure abou the letter) Motherboard.
According to the hacked 2.4 kernel for Sata it uses ICH5
and Most of the settings for my system were auto set.
Ati Radeon 9800 Pro

I dont know if there is anything else you need. Should i put up my .config file?
Also about the blank screen, i found out how to make it work from the sticky. On the second page, first post, has a nice tutorial.

the .config might help, for sure. While I think it probably won't make a difference, the results of lspci might help, too. My RAID0 controller (Highpoint 372) is listed in lspci, and the relevant hardware might be listed in yours, too.

BTW, when you're compiling a new kernel, you should *always* edit inittab to make it boot into RL3 first, not RL4. If you break your video drivers in the process, and you're going straight to RL4, you're toast. You don't know whether it's the kernel that's borked or the video drivers, and you might throw away a perfectly good kernel when all you need to do is reinstall the video drivers.

I have to get ready for school (seems kinda nuts to drive half an hour each way to attend a 1-hour calculus lecture, but meh, that's University for you. At least my tutorial is today, but Wednesday and Friday I get to turn around and drive home after the lecture), but I'll have more time to do a little research when I get back this afternoon.

My inittab is set to boot at runlevel 3:

But im not sure i can give you the same config anymore, i've been recompiling the whole time and testing. Now it cant even get past the lilo boot. I press enter, it gives me a bunch of dots like its loading and then just freezes.

Case closed. I made it work. Apparently i never added Ram Disk support. and I never added the Initrd.gz to my lilo.conf. But before, i did have these and it didnt work. Oh well. At leat it works now.

For future reference, in case anyone is googling this...


CPU0: Machine Check Exception: 0000000000000004
Bank 0: be00030020200137[0118000100900140] at 00000000fee00300
Kernel Panic - not syncing: CPU Context corrupt.

Im fairly sure that error is a MCE check gone bad. To get around it, type "linux nomce"
at your LILO prompt. Or you can recompile your kernel to exclude Machine
Check Exception. HTH..