Arch Linux

wsims

Member

Registered: 2010-04-15

Posts: 34

[SOLVED] (i hope) Intermittent kernel panic "Unable to determine

root device"

Then I'm dropped into a recovery shell.

What I've done:

reboot into live distro, chroot, reinstall latest kernel, reboot, seems ok.

This is my desktop, so it get shutdown daily. After a couple of days, I get the exact same kernel panic "Unable to determine major/minor number of root device"

Recently after getting this error, I've chrooted and ran "mkinitcpio" and it throws an error: "FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.33-ARCH" : "No such file or directory"

Isn't this an old Kernel its looking for? I've been reinstalling the 2.6.37 kernel, but it doesn't seem to be sticking. When the problem resurfaces a couple of days later, i'll run "uname -r" and get the old 2.6.33 Kernel. So once again I go into /var/cache/pacman/pkg and reinstall the latest kernel, reboot and all is fine again, but only for a few days.

When this first happened, I though it was a bug in the Kernel, so I reverted to an older kernel and flagged pacman to NOT upgrade the kernel, but the problem kept occurring. I've reversed this in pacman, and now use the latest Kernel.

Is there something in the mkinitcpio.conf file that needs to be adjusted?

I've also tried using the UUID in identify the root device in grubs menu.lst to no avail.

I've been using my temporary workaround for too long now and need to find a permanent fix.

Thoughts?

I've been using Arch for around a year now and absolutely love it. This is the first issue I've struggled with for an extended period of time. I've found only a handful of posts that have had similar issues.

Thanks

Last edited by wsims (2011-03-05 00:31:11)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,772

Re: [SOLVED] (i hope) Intermittent kernel panic "Unable to determine

Two Questions:

1.  When you chroot, from what are you booting?  Prior to chroot, what does uname -a report?  I'll bet it is the old kernel.

2.  Does your system have more than one hard drive?  Any chance the BIOS is setting things up differently from boot to boot?  I am not a Grub expert, but you might try exploring the system from the Grub command line before booting to see if it is consistent.

---

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Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
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wsims

Member

Registered: 2010-04-15

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] (i hope) Intermittent kernel panic "Unable to determine

Too funny you should make both of those points. (i was actually trying the second one as you were posting)
1: yes its a live cd with an older kernel

2: yes, more than one hard drive. I edited menu.lst from the grub command line, and changed the root device, booted right up.

Now the question is, will it stay.

Thanks for the post ewaller!

EDIT: explained why it was funny to me

Last edited by wsims (2011-03-05 00:34:11)