[SOLVED] botched upgrade: constant reboot vs kernel panic

[mikeumo]

Hello,

I have tried to upgrade from Mageia 2 64 bit. I used mgaonline. after reboot the system does not offer a boot menu but constantly reboots.

I have tried to boot from the boot-nonfree.iso or the classic DVD (64 bit, verified both the download iso and the burnt disks); in both cases the system hangs.

in case of nonfree boot the screen goes blank after I press Enter at the "boot:" prompt.

in case of classic DVD install I get to the boot menu, select "Install Mageia 3" watch "loading kernel" to 100% and then screen goes blank. If I choose "Rescue system" I get a trace with "Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000009" message at the end.

If I choose memory test or hardware ID tool: they work fine.

The computer is unusable. What can I do?

Mikhail.

[wintpe]

restore from the clonezilla backup ive been banging on about for the last year.

did not do it?

ok..... hopefully someone else will read this and learn from your hindsight.

regards peter.

[wintpe]

seriously though.

if theres something about your system that is triggering problems that cause the 3.8 kernel to go black screen

i would suggest a bios reset to defaults.

i have seen this behaviour before when people switchon a setting or tweek there bios.

is this a laptop or desktop?

knowing your hardware would help, as if someone has the same hardwhere almost, they can tell you the differences

that do work for them...

otherwise would boot from mga2 in rescue mode and recover any files that are important from the

OS partition

then reinstall mga 2 so you can get back to where you were.

regards peter

[mikeumo]

Thank you for your suggestions, Peter.

It was not clearcut, but I can now boot from either Mageia 2 boot CD, Mageia 3 HD boot, Mageia 3 boot CD, or Mageia 3 Install DVD. However, Mageia 3 boots still hang in the process.

Resetting BIOS to failsafe defaults helped with that. 3.8.13 Kernel panic was related to enabled IOMMU. However, the boot now hangs at a different point. There was once though numerous reboots that I was able to boot into functional KDE. I checked in boot menu: there were no entries. I set them to GRUB and to kernels 3.4.45 and to 3.8.13. However, now when I boot into 3.4.45 kernel I get "/dev/sda5 not found" (that's where my "/" partition is).
When I boot into 3.8.13 kernel the screen just goes blank after "[TTM] Intializing DMA pool allocator"

Interestingly, I still cannot boot into Windows98 from USB (I can on another Linux box) -- it hangs on the welcoming screen. I shall be contacting TYAN about that. Otherwise, I cannot update the BIOS.

HW: TYAN M/B S8236WGM3NR, CPU: AMD Opteron 6128

[mikeumo]

I think I have a problem with the video driver. I have on board aspeed chip ast2050. However, whether I select ast, or VESA driver, the screen goes blank on subsequent reboot with "input not supported". I do get a graphical interface during installation process, though. Also, when I select and test the ast driver it gives me the color bars so, it is working ok at that time. I tried generic framebuffer driver but that freezes the screen.

So, what can be the problem? Also, how can I get to CLI on the first post-install boot? I try Carl-alt-f1, -f2, etc but that does not work. How can I disable graphical interface during upgrade/installation? I uncheck the "automatically start Xorg upon booting", but when I return to the options, the entry is checked again. And I get to "input not supported" during subsequent reboot.

Thank you for your time,

Mikhail

[mikeumo]

Ok. I had to add "nomodeset" to the kernel parameters at boot and I don't get the blank screen anymore