Topic: Kernel Panic when booting from CD or floppy

[satovey]

I am reposting this in this forum becasue someone asked me why I didn't do so earlier.

I tried to run the SME5.6, SME6.0 and the SME601 installs on my system with a Duron 700ghz processor and 700+ meg of ram PCChips board and recieved a kernel panic error. On my one system (same hardware except 256 meg of ram and 650 Duron processor) to install SME5.6 I had to hold down the control key to adjust the memory down by assigning to the kernel 128 meg of ram by using the mem= command after booting from a floppy. I found this fix within the forums. Holding down the control key does not work with the SME601 release.

Would you add to the installer a script that checks the total ram on the system and then assigns an amount less than the total system ram? I think the problem with this error is that when the installer reads the total onboard ram as being over X amount of ram, it attempts to utilize more ram than is actually on the system, causing a kernel panic due to the fact that the kernel does not see the total ram passed to it.

The script would be quite simple,
get totalram
totalram = mem
if totalram = x
mem = totalram - intx

pass mem to kernel.

By doing this, you can control the amount of memory that is passed to the kernel and eliminate any kernel panics that are caused by more memory on a system than the kernel expects to be there.

After an install a log could be kept and the system could be made to automatically reboot when a kernel panic is issued due to memory. Then upon the reboot, the memory assigned to the kernel would be adjusted down or up depending upon how much memory is on the system and how much memory was previousely on the system. This memory assignment would be stored in a file and adjusted each time the system had to reboot due to a kernel panic, this process would continue until there is no kernel panic at which the system fully boots and runs.

What this type of a setup does is allow the system to correct itself and eliminates this as being a potential bug for admins to deal with.

You could also have default memory settings based upon how much memory a system has and again eliminate the kernel panic that is caused by memory.

Also, the system needs to check the full size of the hard drive and determine whether it should run the linear or lba32 options. I can do an install onto my 160 gig western digital drive using my pentium 233 legacy hardware. However, the system will not boot when the drive is placed into the Duron 650 machine that is going to run the system. Upon installing the system onto a 20 gig drive or lower using the pentium 233 system, I can move the drive to the Duron 650 system and boot the system with no problems.

So I have a 160gig drive here just waiting to have the server installed upon it but I cannot do so because while the install cd will boot on the Pentium 233 machine, it will not boot on the Duron 650 machine.

I am thinking that if you replace the 2.4 kernel with the 2.6 kernel, this may resolve these issues. However, this has to be done on the install cd in order to eliminate this problem.

I was able to boot the Fedoral Core 2 cd on both the P233 and the Duron 650 machines.

Just a suggestion:

Scott

[satovey]

I got to thinking that maybe the issue was with the cdrw drive I was using. However, this proved to be not the case. So while I was testing this little possibility, I decided to write down the last few lines that came up just prior to and including the kernel panic.

>>>Begin messages logs:

NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET3.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 8192 buckets, 64 kbytes
TCP: Hash Tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0
EXT2-fs: Unabe to read superblock
Crom fs: wrong magic
FAT: Unable to read boot sector
ISOfs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:00, iso_blknum=16, block=32

<<<End Message log

This error occurs on my new memorex cdrw as well as my older HP 8X cdrw.

[satovey]

This problem is due to a problem with the command
in the create reinstallation disk panel. See
Create reinstallation bug prevents boot from
floppy/cd post.

[satovey]

It's amazing what you find when your
not looking for it. I was on the
PcChips website looking for a bios
upgrade and this is what I found:)

I tried it and the sucker booted from
the cd. You might what to try it and
see if this is the same issue with
your system.

44. Why does it crash when I try to install Red Hat Linux?
Many people have tried to install Red Hat Linux 7.2 and found that the installer crashes with a kernel panic. This can be resolved by disabling ACPI/APM in the BIOS prior to installing Red Hat. This can be re-enabled after installation if required. Also, ensure that the CD drive that you are installing from is jumpered to either "master" or "slave", and not "cable select".

Some people who find that Red Hat gets confused when using the onboard VGA (shared memory). The fix is to use the following command "boot: linux mem=64m" when booting from the first CD.

When installing XFree86, it may pay for you to use the command "Xconfigurator --noddcprobe" to prevent crashing. Some people find the alternative VGA driver from http://www.webit.at/~twinny/linuxsis630.shtml better than the default.

I personally have had no such problems with crashes or with X when installing Linux on my machine. This is probably due to the fact that I use Debian GNU/Linux!