System crashed, kernel panic on reboot [Solved --> nvidia]

BitJam · Last edited by BitJam on Thu Jul 10, 2014 5:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

edit: The problem was caused by nvidia-drivers-337.25.

My Gentoo system crashed overnight and when I try to reboot I get a kernel panic around the time udev starts up. The panic is repeatable.

I originally thought it was a hardware problem but my "old" Gentoo system (on a different hard drive on the same box) boots and runs fines. The new system is on an Intel 530 Series SSD that I got about 7 months ago. I next thought the ssd failed but running "smartctl -a" on the device says it is fine. The ext4 root partition and ext3 boot partitions were both fine according to fsck. The log file at /var/log/messages shows nothing unusual. I partitioned the ssd with gpt. Both the root and the boot partitions mount without any problem.

The old system and the new system use the same kernel so I could try booting into the new system by editing the root= parameter when I boot the older system. I haven't tried this yet. I can mount the new root partition but I have not tried to chroot into it. The md5 sum of the old kernel and the new kernel are the same.

I'm fine on the old system for now. The new system uses a different initrd but all it does is enable fbcondecor and it has booted fine in the past.

Any ideas or suggestions?

DONAHUE · Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:05 pm Post subject:

post a picture of the panic screen?
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Defund the FCC.

BitJam · Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:20 pm Post subject:

Great idea! I rebooted into the new system so I could take a picture and this time it booted without a panic. I'm posting this from the new system.

PS: IIRC, the original panic message was a null pointer dereference. This is what made me think there might have been file system damage and a few bits out of place in the kernel.

DONAHUE · Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:55 pm Post subject:

Murpy's law repealed or reversed.
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Defund the FCC.

BitJam · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 5:17 pm Post subject:

The problem was due to an upgrade to nvidia-drivers-337.25. I downgraded back to 334.21-r3 and the problems went away. The newer driver had worked after it was emerged but it prevents the system from booting properly. Apparently nvidia has jumped onto the KMS modeset bandwagon. Of course, the "nomodeset" boot parameter does nothing.

DONAHUE · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 5:48 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the information. I tend to avoid kms except when it appears to be causing someone's problem and I get curious. Normally use fglrx or nvidia; had no idea kms was attacking nvidia.
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Defund the FCC.