The yukky kernel panic (SOLVED)

[ilovebeer]

Hello, I have a working kernel for thinkpad but after many instances of kernel panic with a rebuilt kernel i built a kernel with just about everything enabled and yahoo it worked. this working kernel gave me kernel panic too but gave me a list of available partitions that led me to change root in grub menu.lst to /dev/sdb4 instead of sda4, altered fstab to sdb# on all partitions and everything worked albeit with a HUGE and very sluggish kernel. then i tried to pare down the kernel and lo an behold i got kernel panic again but without the available partitions option. what could i have de-activated in the kernel to make /dev/sdb4 unavailable again? i at least have a working kernel but certainly want it without all the useless options included. thanks.

[DawgG]

what kind of a thinkpad have you got? i've got a t61 8890-cto which runs perfectly. i can post my config and maybe you can start from that.
it's not necesary top read the partitions from a panicked kernel, you can use /etc/fstab :wink:
_________________
DUMM KLICKT GUT.

[ilovebeer]

hey, re fstab, what i meant was that upon kernel panic immediately following was a message that basically said "this is a list of available partitions to boot" and sdb4 (my apparent gentoo root partition) was among the choices. i have only one hard disk that i have always needed to refer to as /dev/sda# suddenly i have to refer to it as /dev/sdb# to get gentoo to boot. i had to change fstab to reflect that the previous /dev/sda partitions for /boot /swap and /home were now /dev/sdb partitions. i have xubuntu and archlinux booting from the same grub and both are referred to as /dev/sda# and boot without problem. the below text is from cfdisk. seems i have a very small hard disk with no partitions and is still referred to as /dev/sda. could this possibly be a kernel bug? or possibly i've enabled something in the kernel that screws around with device map.

cfdisk (util-linux-ng 2.13.1.1)

Disk Drive: /dev/sda
Size: 8388608 bytes, 8 MB
Heads: 8 Sectors per Track: 32 Cylinders: 64

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pri/Log Free Space 8.39











[ Help ] [ New ] [ Print ] [ Quit ] [ Units ]
[ Write ]

Quit program without writing partition table

thanks for the offer of your .config. i would be interested to have a look especially if you have the Fn keys working and also have bluetooth working. btw i have thinkpad sl500 #27464UM. thanks

[DawgG]

that's very strange indeed. i suggest you boot one of the other installed os and configure the gentoo-kernel from scratch in a chroot with only the stuff you need - checking how the other distros' kernels are configured can help a lot.
you could also try to boot gentoo with another distro's kernel and use its .config to start with your gentoo's kernel's .config.

[ilovebeer]

the kernel .config i'm using came from xubuntu and i'm working my way back from there. i really don't care if gentoo refers to the hd as /dev/sdb as long as it works.
lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2a40 (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2a41 (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2919 (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Mobile SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 06e9 (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 4237
0c:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)
0d:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
0d:00.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
0d:00.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
0d:00.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)

thanks for your assistance. i'm very new to modern laptops and the learning curve is mountainous.

[cyrillic]

[ilovebeer]

hey all, cyrillic you hit the nail on the head! damn.. it wasn't a thumb drive but a usb dvd drive that was the culprit. unplugged the drive and all my problems went away. thankyou both for your assistance.