Kernel panic - Confused partitions

[Tommy Reynolds]

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 00:11:51 +0200, NetMasker wrote:

> Thanks for your response Tommy but it seems that I didn't erased my root
> partition.  I booted again with the cd-rom rescue method and I can see
> my files and linux files also.

Cool.  This is very good news.

> But I think my partitions are still confused. I tried to unmount and
> mount the partitions again but it told me that they were mounted
> differently in /etc/mtab.

"/etc/mtab" is a generated file.  You could safely delete it and try
rebooting.  That won't solve the problem but if you could post the
new content it may help us track this down.
 
> What if I run lilo again? I use the windows nt boot loader to boot and I
> don't want to destroy this.

Don't bother.

> I run the test: "lilo -t -v" and I took this message: fatal: open
> /boot/boot.b: No such file or directory. I also noticed that the "/boot"
> directory has no contents (but the others directories are ok).

What happens if you boot via rescue mode, and switch to your hard
drive.  Assume that rescue mode has mounted your root filesystem as
"/sysimage"; you might try this:

	# chroot /sysimage
	# lilo -t -v

so lilo will look at your hard drive files, not those of the rescue
media.
 
> Below is the boot error again:
> ----------------------
> Creating root device
> Mounting root filesystem
> Kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds. EXT3-fs: mounted
> filesystem with ordered data mode. pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot/,
> /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 Freeing unused kernel memory: 280k free
> Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.
> ----------------------

Hmmm... this is the classic behavior when the root file system is not
mounted correctly.

1.  What does your "/etc/lilo.conf" file look like?

2.  What does "fdisk -l /dev/hda" output show?

Cheers!