Arch Linux

satori

Member

Registered: 2013-01-21

Posts: 29

Old PC - kernel panic with recent live cd boot

Hello,

I have an old desktop PC on which I run minimal Arch installation, it has only 96 MB of RAM but that was enough to run the system so far.
When I'm using recent installation ISOs, (2014.08, 2014.09) I'm facing kernel panics when booting i686 live cd.

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exit code 0x00000007

MD5 is correct, I am able to boot on other machines.

I found old 2013.05 install cd and everything runs correctly with it.

I know the timespan between 2013.05 and 2014.08 is large, but do you know of any changes that might explain such behaviour?
What can I try to boot successfully using new ISOs?

clfarron4

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2013-06-28

Posts: 2,163

Website

Re: Old PC - kernel panic with recent live cd boot

There are too many (kernel) changes that I could point you to.

With this little information about your hardware, it could be damn near anything, so it'd probably be helpful to know what hardware you're trying to run it on.

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nomorewindows

Member

Registered: 2010-04-03

Posts: 3,375

Re: Old PC - kernel panic with recent live cd boot

You might have to install from the liveCD that works, and only install a base package set.  Then by installing a recently updated Arch install to your hard disk, with the older liveCD see if you can spot the problem from there.

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I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
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satori

Member

Registered: 2013-01-21

Posts: 29

Re: Old PC - kernel panic with recent live cd boot

Hello and thank you for your answers!

I tried multiple ISOs to find out when the problem started to occur.
ISO from 2013.09 boots well, while 2013.10 and newer freeze or panic.
That corresponds to kernel versions 3.10.10 and 3.11.2.

When I am using latest working ISO as livecd, I have following logs:
dmesg http://pastebin.com/A3Gq35uR
lsmod http://pastebin.com/m1L6kwkf
lspci http://pastebin.com/C2EL8evc

I am able to install base system and boot it - there is no panic nor freeze.
The big problem, however, is that my graphics card is not detected anymore (as described here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187109)

Here are logs from installed system (lspci is same as above, except that VGA line is missing):
dmesg http://pastebin.com/xRprAHTb
lsmod http://pastebin.com/AQA2VkaH

I think I will focus on changes introduced between the kernel versions.