From: Constant Brouerius van Nidek [mailto:constant@indo.net.id] Understanding is certainly the beginning of solving problems.
Definitely :)
I assume that kernel panic indicates that there is something terrible wrong with the computer. But it does not give me more than those well known Windows info's.
Sure it does, as long as you know how to read those messages ...
Reason I want to know is of course that a kernel panic is affecting my computer at startup. After the information that my cdrom drive is configured the kernel panic starts with "VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 16:01" What is VFS? fs? and where is 16:01?
VFS is the Virtual File System. It's mounted at system startup to start init and load all necessary drivers to mount your harddisk as /. 16:01 is the address of the disk it tries to mount. Most commonly you have forgotten to update your initrd (have a look at /etc/sysconfig/kernel, there should be something like INITRD_MODULES="reiserfs e100". Read initrd(4) and "mk_initrd -h". Provide all your necessary drivers (filesystems, scsi-controllers, not standard ide-controllers, ethernet cards, whatever) and type "mk_initrd" and, if you use lilo as bootmanager, type "lilo" afterwards.
If I use the first cd of my Suse 8 I can boot normally if I use the choice to boot an existing system. Why panic in one case and not via the other way to boot?
because a necessary driver (controller, filesystem,...) is missing in the one case, but not in the other
I have already tested my memory with the program supplied with Suse and that program cannot find any problem. When I start using norton utilities, ndiags, I get after a certain period a nicely checkered screen with a lot of blinking squares and ascii signs. What discovers norton which is not found by the Suse memory checker?
I don't know Norton's memchecker ... sorry. regards, Stefan