kernel panic in RH 7.1

[marcbachman]

Somehow I hosed my install already and when I have my boot floppy and the RH CD in I get a message "unable to mount root fs"...."kernel panic" or something to that effect. Anyway, rather than reinstalling I thought I would ask if some kind soul would guide me in the path to fix the problem. I don't have the RH manual, which is a bummer, does it have a section for dealing with this problem? And, I also need to reconfigure the mouse because I bought a new optical mouse and when I installed I had a serial mouse.

[Linuxcool]

Try here (http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7.1-Manual/customization-guide/rescuemode.html) . Maybe this will help.

[ 11 June 2001: Message edited by: Linuxcool ]

[pbharris]

hello,
redhat 7.1 will configure your mouse. was the system ever up and runnig normally?

[marcbachman]

O.K., I tried linux root= /dev/hdb1 and the shell prompt said " bash:linux: command not found. Did I do the syntax wrong? I put the RH #1 installation CD and typed in " linux rescue " and got to a message that said " your system is mounted under the /mnt/sysimage directory. Then I couldn't figure out what to do with that. I tried mount -t /dev/hdb1 and it didn't know that directory. A message I got earlier in the process somewhere said " boot failed: couldn't find /etc/fstab. Anything left to do? :confused:

[marcbachman]

O.K., I tried linux root= /dev/hdb1 and the shell prompt said " bash:linux: command not found. Did I do the syntax wrong? I put the RH #1 installation CD and typed in " linux rescue " and got to a message that said " your system is mounted under the /mnt/sysimage directory. Then I couldn't figure out what to do with that. I tried mount -t /dev/hdb1 and it didn't know that directory. A message I got earlier in the process somewhere said " boot failed: couldn't find /etc/fstab. Anything left to do? :confused:

[pbharris]

hello,
Did the system finish booting? The 'linux root=/dev/hdb1' should come at the LILO prompt, not the shell prompt. i.e. when you first start up you are given an option of what to boot. If you are using a graphical login screen hit ctrl-x then enter it.

[marcbachman]

Good friends-
It appears that now I am able to log on in text mode fine, and there is a "bash" shell at my disposal. I have gotten the "rescue mode" portion of the RH manual but I obviously don't know the syntax to do a fsck command, because the bash shell doesn't recognize it as a command. Anyway I can log on fine, I think what is bothering me now is that I don't have the KDE interface to work with. During the boot process I get the pre- KDE dark screen like it's going to splash and then it goes back to text login. So how can I get KDE back?


:confused:

[Linuxcool]

If you used the info I gave you, you should be able to access the fsck command according to the Red Hat Rescue page I gave you. In rescue mode you only have text interface to work with.


Do you still get the message that your system is mounted under /mnt/sysimage ? I believe it is telling you that your root partition is mounted there. If you do a ' ls /mnt/sysimage ', you just might see the contents of your root directory. It's possible that rerunning lilo might get you up and running. If your root partition is mounted under /mnt/sysimage , you'll have to enter the command ' /mnt/sysimage/sbin/lilo ' to run the command lilo. Then try rebooting. This may or may not work. But it's a simple thing to try.

[marcbachman]

Thank You- What I did was enter linux root=/dev/hdb1 at the boot prompt ( I already know what a boot prompt is )my / partition is hdb1. Then at the bash shell ( I think ) I did an su to root and ran fsck.ext2 /dev/hdb and it looked like something happened. Then I typed in /sbin/lilo and got linux dos output like it says in the book I have and I thought everything should be O.K. but when I rebooted
there was no KDE.So I have done a total reinstall of RH 7.1 using the same partition table in Disk Druid, I had to set the main partition as active ( / ) before it would install, and rebooted and there is still no KDE anywhere to be found, and yes, I absolutely did select it as my default desktop. So unless I hear of something else to do I guess I'll do an fdisk in Windows and reformat the drive before I try installing RH again, because it worked last time. I am now thoroughly convinced that I need to find out how to deal with these problems asap so that I will be prepared to solve simple problems and potentially help other people whom I will try to demonstrate RH 7.1 to. If there's a book on troubleshooting Linux OS I need to read it. Thanks Again, I'll be in touch.

D
D

[Linuxcool]

OK. Try running the command ' runlevel ' to see what runlevel you're in. It will print out two characters. The first one will probably be an ' N '. The second one should be your runlevel. You should be in runlevel ' 5 '. If not, you'll have to edit your ' inittab ' file. It's in the ' /etc ' directory. As root, open up the 'inittab ' file and look for a line something like this ' id:5:initdefault: '. If it says something other than ' 5 ', change it to ' 5 ' and save it. Then reboot.

If ' runlevel ' reports that you're already in runlevel ' 5', try running ' startx ' and see if that doesn't get you kde.

[marcbachman]

I reinstalled RH 7.1 twice. Both times when
I got to the graphical login screen ( KDE )
neither my mouse nor my keyboard worked. I
would not be so confused except that both my mouse and my keyboard worked great during the install. I have a Logitech wheel mouse and a
plain generic keyboard ( LITEON ) the only
thing I know to try is reinstall with a serial mouse until I find out what's wrong with KDE?