[SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

sugardeath · 2010-12-26 00:43:00

I unplugged my laptop and desktop earlier today to clean around them since the area was getting dirty.

My desktop booted up just fine, but when I plugged my laptop back in and booted it, it started giving me a kernel panic, something about not finding the FS on the device it was supposed to be booting. I grabbed a live disc of Arch and chrooted into my installation. Everything is there, just as it should be. I ran a full pacman -Syyu to update everything.. maybe I had messed something up since last time I booted it.

This got rid of the kernel panic, but it's still unable to boot:

:: Running Hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents.. done.
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/90d6457b-ca52-4f3c-bbec-a5e8db32485e ...
Root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/90d6457b-ca52-4f3c-bbec-a5e8db32485e' doesn't exist.  Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine the major/minor number of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/90d6457b-ca52-4f3c-bbec-a5e8db32485e'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
...

When I type `exit` into the recovery shell, it says it failed to mount the real root device, tells me I'm on my own, and another exit produces a different kernel panic than before.

I've changed grub to ask for /dev/sda3 (the root partition) instead of by-uuid, but the same thing happens. There are no harddrives available to me under the recovery shell. I've tried running `mkinitcpio -p kernel26` from the chroot, but the results are the same.

To the best of my memory, I did not change anything on this machine (settings, packages, etc.) between now and the last boot (a good month or so ago).

Does anyone have any ideas? It was running 2.6.33 and is now on 2.6.36.

At one point I was prompted to add 'rootfstype=' to grub, so I added it to both the /dev/sda3 and by-uuid options and specified ext3 , but with no luck.

Hopefully something can be figured out soon, this laptop was the gateway to my network from the outside world.

Thank you.

Last edited by sugardeath (2010-12-28 07:45:34)

lagagnon · 2010-12-26 17:53:04

This appears to me as if it really is a hardware fault, and nothing to do with the OS. If it were me I would reboot, get into the BIOS, see if the BIOS is recognizing the hard drive, turn on SMART disk monitoring, watch the boot messages during boot to see if possible hard drive fault. If drive in error on boot then try removing the laptop hard drive and then replace it. Perhaps the drive has simply come loose from its contacts (although doubtful).

If BIOS an SMART messages all appear OK then boot a Live Linux CD (or USB drive) and check your partitions with "fdisk -l" and see if they are still viable.

sugardeath · 2010-12-26 19:07:14

The BIOS does see the drive, and all my partitions and their data are there.. I can view and interact with them from the live disc.

I'll see if the BIOS has SMART options later today, but I don't recall the BIOS being all that... featureful.

lagagnon · 2010-12-26 19:23:32

Well I am probably wrong then. Maybe you should just try to reinstall grub from a Live CD (you can also use the ArchLinux CD for this).

sugardeath · 2010-12-26 19:55:47

Forgive me, but how would this be a GRUB issue?

As with the SMART thing, I'll give this a shot later today when I have access to the laptop again.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

sugardeath · 2010-12-27 09:58:35

Reinstalling GRUB didn't help and the BIOS doesn't have any SMART options in it.

Output of fdisk -l /dev/sda:

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders, total 117210240 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x902f694a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       80324       40162   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           80325     2136644     1028160   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3         2136645    17510849     7687102+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4        17510850   117210239    49849695   83  Linux

As far as I can tell, that all looks good? I don't know what the + means on /dev/sda3's block size there, but badblocks says there's no bad blocks on the entire device and e2fsck turns up no problems when run on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4...

skodabenz · 2010-12-27 10:23:48

sugardeath wrote:

Reinstalling GRUB didn't help and the BIOS doesn't have any SMART options in it.
Output of fdisk -l /dev/sda:
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders, total 117210240 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x902f694a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       80324       40162   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           80325     2136644     1028160   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3         2136645    17510849     7687102+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4        17510850   117210239    49849695   83  Linux
As far as I can tell, that all looks good? I don't know what the + means on /dev/sda3's block size there, but badblocks says there's no bad blocks on the entire device and e2fsck turns up no problems when run on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4...

Does this help - http://www.linux-archive.org/centos/736 … -sign.html

brianhanna · 2010-12-27 14:16:42

I think we're shooting in the dark. You may want to Google "linux kernel panic troubleshooting" or something similar and see if you can narrow down the cause.

sugardeath · 2010-12-27 20:10:34

Thanks for the link skodabenz, that helps with the plus sign at least.

Well, brianhanna, it's no longer panicking right away anymore. It says it can no longer find the root device despite there being no apparent abnormalities with it (I can read and write to it with a live cd, got example).

I've tried reinstalling the kernel as well as grub just in case, but neither worked. I haven't googled that exact issue yet. Currently trying to get ATT to restore my internet connection, which its incredibly hard when calls keep dropping.

I'll look into that as soon as possible.

sugardeath · 2010-12-28 07:45:16

Fixed! Sort of. I reinstalled an old version of the kernel and an old version of udev ala:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=92279

and now my laptop boots. We'll see if this comes up again later after another update.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-26 00:43:00

[SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#2 2010-12-26 17:53:04

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#3 2010-12-26 19:07:14

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#4 2010-12-26 19:23:32

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#5 2010-12-26 19:55:47

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#6 2010-12-27 09:58:35

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#7 2010-12-27 10:23:48

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#8 2010-12-27 14:16:42

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#9 2010-12-27 20:10:34

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

#10 2010-12-28 07:45:16

Re: [SOLVED]Unplugged laptop to clean around it, now kernel panic on boot.

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