Help what does kernel panic Mean?

[Stephen J. Turnbull <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

kernel panic is the Real OS[tm] equivalent of the Blue Screen of
Death. It takes creativity and courage to elicit, however; unlike the
BSOD which only requires a small amount of patience. ;-)

>>>>> Dave == Dave <david [at] union18.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

Dave> I tryed to make boot disks and ended up with a directory on
Dave> my C; called loadlin, in it files, Debug.out, Linux,
Dave> Linuix.par, loadlin, Susesave.mnu, and zimage

You're sure this is all, right? It doesn't look to me like you have
any of the necessary system files there.

Dave> i now also have a new linux prompt that shuts down windows
Dave> runs dos and runs linux hda1 umsdos when i try it scroles
Dave> down the screen and just when i think something is going to
Dave> happen it stops with this message:

Dave> Kernel panic no init found try passing init = option to kernel

Dave> what do i do next?

Install all of the files and programs that do real work somewhere
where the kernel can find them. ;-)

Basically, the OS kernel comes in two parts, a boot loader (whose
messages you saw), and a server which provides resource allocation
services to the rest of the programs you run.

The kernel, by itself, does _nothing_[1] after the boot process is
finished. It just waits for programs (_not_ users; _you_ cannot talk
to the kernel except by using a program) to ask it to give them
resources: memory, data from disk files, data from I/O devices,
starting new programs. If you look carefully, you'll see a second
bootstrap problem: if the kernel only starts programs when a programs
asks it to, where did the first program come from?

The answer is that the last step of the bootstrap process occurs when
the kernel starts a program called init. Init is the Father of
Processes (running programs): it starts some programs to look at the
keyboard and converse with you (usually insisting that you login
first), it starts other programs to listen the the wide world calling
from the internet, it starts yet other programs to manage your printer
and your Web site and so on.

The kernel panic was caused because the kernel could not find the
program init. Init normally lives on the root hard disk (usually
the same one as the original kernel, but in your case it might not be,
if you installed Linux on the second disk) in a file called /sbin/init.

Try cd'ing to the c:loadlin directory, and running

loadlin linux root=/dev/hdb1

(/dev/hdb is what DOS thinks of as the D: drive).

This is a pure WAG, so I don't really expect it to work. If it
doesn't, we need more details about exactly what you copied to disk
and to which disk and so on.

Footnotes:
[1] A little white lie. It does keep some records (eg, date/time)
and do some housekeeping, and service interrupts (sounds lascivious
but it isn't, really!)

--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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