Author Topic: PCLinuxOS and the mystery of the Kernel Panic  (Read 595 times)

Offline Bonfire

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PCLinuxOS and the mystery of the Kernel Panic
« on: September 15, 2012, 12:30:27 AM »
Hello all!
    Over the last 7 years I've worked with almost every OS that was originally based on Mandrake/Mandriva, including PCLOS, and the more recent forks of ROSA, POCA, Mageia, and have always installed Grub to their Root Partition and used OSL 2000 Boot Commander to boot-up Windows Vista along with 6 Linux distros that I love to test and work with. I use OSL 2000 to do this in order to keep Vista's pathetically fragile MBR safe to ensure access to Vista.  Alongside Vista, I always have the Linux OS' in separate partitions as I love to spend one day of the week working with each one to see how they are all evolving over the years - one each from Slackware, Ubuntu, BSD, Gentoo, Arch and Fedora - all with Grub installed to their Root Partitions - and OSL 2000 has always booted them perfectly... except for PCLOS and Mandriva which plunge instantly into a Kernel Panic.  Even when I have installed PCLOS on a Primary Partition and installed Grub over Vista's MBR, the results have never varied - PCLinuxOS boots into an immediate Kernel Panic then freezes.  I've tried to have PCLOS coexist with other Linux OS' since 2008 but no matter the configuration or tweaking I try, a Kernel Panic results. 
    Now what I find so inexplicable is that France's Mageia 2 and Russia's ROSA Marathon have no trouble at all booting from root with OSL 2000 despite the fact they have a very similar heritage to PCLinuxOS.  Have any other members run into this issue over the years?  Have any members been able to solve it?  Any helpful suggestions would be truly appreciated in solving this issue.
With sincere thanks,
Mars Bonfire  ???

PS: Please do NOT pass judgement on why anyone would want to run seven operating systems.  That would be less than helpful.

Offline sling-shot

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Re: PCLinuxOS and the mystery of the Kernel Panic
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2012, 01:51:46 AM »
I have no experience / need of OSL 2000 Boot Commander. So I do not know its advantages or why you would need a third party boot manager.

For me GRUB Legacy as used by PCLinuxOS works fine for booting PCLinuxOS, Windows or any other Linux distribution which I may care to test.
I have put my main PCLinuxOS bootloader to MBR and then I add entries to it in order to boot any other partition.

Alternatively, you could install Windows bootloader to MBR and then use EasyBCD from within Windows to set up other partitions for booting.

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Online Just17

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Re: PCLinuxOS and the mystery of the Kernel Panic
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2012, 04:03:12 AM »
No I have not met with what you describe .......  yes I have had kernel panics at times and from memory most of them were due to an incorrect boot line .....  editing it to correct it solved those problems.

I have never used or even heard of OSL 2000 Boot Commander.
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Offline TerryN

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Re: PCLinuxOS and the mystery of the Kernel Panic
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2012, 04:42:37 AM »
It might help if you tell us the panic reason (it's in the panic message)

Often it is because the bootloader is not being told to load the initrd image and so the kernel finds itself with no rootfs but there can be many other reasons.  

Terry
« Last Edit: September 15, 2012, 05:06:21 AM by TerryN »
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