Hi,

Brand new to these forums, only slightly less new to Linux. I have a dual-boot Dell with XP/Linux.

I have been running FC2 on my laptop for a while... just haven't gotten around to upgrading.

On Friday, I shut down the system normally, and when I started up again a few hours later, I received a kernel panic message: no init found. This was true in all three kernel versions I have installed. Windows loads fine...

I used a rescue disk to run fsck on my /boot and / partitions, and both came back clean. When I mount the partitions, I can see my files and can't see any obvious data corruptions.

I went to /var/log and looked at various log files, including dmesg: nothing stuck out for me (though I don't look at log files that often).

I am at a loss as to what to do next. I have backed up my important files and could always just re-install a newer distribution, but I'm not convinced this isn't a problem with my hardware.

Looking for direction from anyone charitable enough to offer advice... thanks in advance.

Reinstalling is probably the easiesst thing to do - INIT is the program which is run by the kernel to boot the system, and it seems t have gone missing. You could recompile the kernel, but it is is, IMO, far easier and less likely to go wrong if you just reinstall.

D

The initrd*img files are still in /boot -- so you're saying that the program to actually use these files to boot is missing?

The bootloader might be giving the wrong parameters to the kernel, or the initrds might be corrupted, or init itself might be broken. Init runs even if the system doesnt use the initrds, it is a little unforunate that they are so similarly named since they are slightly different things. One could be causing problems with the other, since they are both used a boot time however.

It might be a good idea to download FC5 and do an installation of that. It is generally better to do fresh installs than upgrades anyway, so you would be killing two birds with one stone.

D

Sounds like bad blocks from an unclean shutdown. Its an easy fix.

Since there is no fix that I have been able to find, I will help everyone out.

This is the typical error message: Kernel Panic: No init found Try passing init= option to kernel

Install your linux Disc 1
type: linux rescue
go through the prompts you dont need to set up networking.
when at prompt type: e2fsck -pvy /dev/hda1
it will fix it automatically
remove your disk
and reboot with ctrl + alt + delete

remember when shutting down type: shutdown -h 0

note: hda1 drive that contains the MBR (master boot record) YOURS COULD BE DIFFERENT

Your welcome

Joe

"It's as simple as popping a pimple"

That will only work with a few distributions - Some of them don't suply a rescue tool, some supply it on an additional CD and some use a different boot command to invoke it.

D