kernel panic not syncing vfs unable to mount root fs on unknown block oo swapper not tainted

Question

I updated my laptop (ubuntu software) to 11.10 and I dont know what went wrong that when I restarted the computer It would start and it would only tell me "kernel panic not syncing vfs unable to mount root fs on unknown block oo swapper not tainted..."

I am a new user and I have NO idea what to do, it sucks! any ideas on what to do? HELP

Answer 1

You are missing the initramfs for that kernel. Choose another kernel from the grub menu, or run update-initramfs -u -k version to generate the initrd for version then update-grub.

Start with a livecd, open a a terminal

sudo fdisk -l
sudo mount /dev/sdax /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo mount --bind /run /mnt/run
sudo chroot /mnt 

and now you can make update-initramfs and update-grub with out errors

Additionally, after the chroot:

cp -r /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pango /usr/lib/

update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.38-8-generic #(or your version)
update-grub2

And reboot your system

Answer 2

1. Get/burn an installation CD with a linux system.

2. Booted from this CD (may need to press F12 (or other key) to choose boot option).

3. Mount the old file system on, I use:

Code:

$ mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt

1. In ROOT account, went to my boot volume (at /mnt/boot/grub) and edited "grub.conf" so that (A) I would see the menu and (B) it would give me a few seconds to choose and option:

Code:

timeout=10

hiddenmenu

1. Rebooted (from the hard disk this time).

2. Chose the second kernel (not the most recent broken one).

3. It worked!

4. So, then I went back to grub (now at "/etc/grub.conf", which is soft linked to "/boot/grub/grub.conf") and edited it to comment out (or remove) the lines relating to the broken kernel:

Code:

title Fedora (2.6.40-4.fc15.i686)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.40-4. ......

I noticed this stanza does not have "initrd ..." line. Maybe that's why it couldn't boot.