Fresh SLACK15 [No Current] Install always Kernel Panic after reboot

BAcidEvil · 01-31-2025, 08:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colorpurple21859

The error message indicates the filesystem couldn't be mounted. If the slackware15 iso boots and installs without any issue, I've seen several threads on LQ where the issue was the internal drive was some sort of usb device and the mkinitrd_command_generator wouldn't pick up on the needed usb modules.

from a iso, mount the filesystem, mount --bind dev proc sys run to the same files on the mounted system, chroot into the system,

regenerate the initrd with the added usb modules.

or attempt to install the downloaded kernel-generic file from current using installpkg and when mkinitrd is run use -k for kernel-version -o /boot/initrd.img-<kernel version>

or

Weird, it is a 500G M.2 Drive so that really does not make sense but I mean it is what it is. Unfortunately for me, Linux (Slackware) was always a petty simple dive as it was just installed, setup postfix/dovecot and I was done. Never had to learn funky commands or troubleshoot . Maybe I was lucky. So a lot of these tricks are just swooping over my head . I guess I’ll have to get lucky eventually.

The only USB device on the system was the thumb drive usb-c. there is no other usb device.

kalwisti · 02-15-2025, 11:26 PM

My searching turned up mixed results as to whether Slackware 15.0 (-stable branch) supports NVMe drives, so I decided to experiment. Yesterday I was able to successfully install from a Slackware 15.0 USB on a Dell XPS 13 laptop [ca. 2017, with UEFI] and a Crucial P3 1TB NVMe drive [model # CT1000P3SSD8] and 8 GB of RAM. I used GRUB rather than eLILO.

(I'm a new Slackware user, so I might not have done things the "correct" way and just was extremely lucky.)

I'm posting this in case it might give you an alternative approach ...

The Crucial NVMe has a gpt partition table, and I created a /boot/efi partition [fat32 file system] of 619 MiB with flags of "boot,esp". It was identified as /dev/nvme0n1p1.

I pre-partitioned the drive with GParted (from a Live USB session on Puppy Linux). I created a root partition of 55 GiB [ext4] (/dev/nvme0n1p2), a /home partition of 824 GiB [ext4] (/dev/nvme0n1p4) and a swap partition of 2.79 GiB [linux-swap] (/dev/nvmen0n1p3).

I skipped using the Slackware installer's built-in partitioner(s) and went directly to the "setup" stage of the installation. As I proceeded through the installation steps, the installer correctly identified/recognized all my partitions.

I skipped the step of installing LILO and also skipped installing eLILO (because I wanted GRUB as the bootloader).

I followed the procedure demonstrated by OldTechBloke (R.I.P., Steve) in his YouTube video. The segment relating to GRUB installation runs from minute 21:06 until 24:49:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yoP9xnh4jI
OldTechBloke. "Slackware 15 is Released! [...]" 5 Feb. 2022.

After typing the

Code:

# mount

command, I was hopeful of success when I saw that /boot/efi was recognized on /dev/nvme0n1p1. I crossed my fingers and continued ...

The sequence of commands for this part of the procedure is:

Code:

# mount
# chroot /mnt /bin/bash
# source /etc/profile
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=grub
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

(OldTechBloke reminds viewers that the "grub-mkconfig" command must be run every time the kernel is updated.)

I was pleasantly surprised that when I completed the installation and rebooted, the GRUB screen displayed and I booted into Slackware with no problems -- no kernel panic, no halting at a " grub> " prompt. (Again, maybe this is a case of beginner's luck.)

HTH and Good luck.

P.S.
Output from fdisk and /etc/fstab:

Code:

root@darkstar:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: CT1000P3SSD8
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: F56B37DE-BFD4-480F-9EEE-E6E71B43A8EA

Device             Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048    1271807    1269760   620M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2   1271808  118458367  117186560  55.9G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 118458368  124317695    5859328   2.8G Linux swap
/dev/nvme0n1p4 124317696 1882130431 1757812736 838.2G Linux filesystem

/etc/fstab:

Code:

/dev/nvme0n1p3   swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/nvme0n1p2   /                ext4        defaults         1   1
/dev/nvme0n1p4   /home            ext4        defaults         1   2
/dev/nvme0n1p1   /boot/efi        vfat        defaults         1   0
#/dev/cdrom      /mnt/cdrom       auto        noauto,owner,ro,comment=x-gvfs-show 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
tmpfs            /dev/shm         tmpfs       nosuid,nodev,noexec 0   0

henca · 02-16-2025, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalwisti

My searching turned up mixed results as to whether Slackware 15.0 (-stable branch) supports NVMe drives, so I decided to experiment. Yesterday I was able to successfully install from a Slackware 15.0 USB on a Dell XPS 13 laptop [ca. 2017, with UEFI] and a Crucial P3 1TB NVMe drive [model # CT1000P3SSD8] and 8 GB of RAM. I used GRUB rather than eLILO.

Some years ago I installed Slackware 14.2 on nvme drives. Like you I found that LILO was unable to boot from them. Also like you, I didn't use eLILO. However, unlike you I did choose a newer version of syslinux/extlinux to boot from those nvme drives. So by definition this was not a stock Slackware installation as I had updated the bootloader to a version of syslinux that was newer than the one included in Slackware.

Back then I did choose syslinux mostly because it was familiar to me. I had previously used its isolinux to create bootable CD and DVD and I had at some occasions used its pxelinux to boot from network. Today syslinux might be considered abandonware, but it still works to boot Slackware 15.0 machines from nvme or other disks with UEFI.

regards Henrik