log files

[flandercan]

Could anyone tell me where to look for log files , i have two systems that keep crashing one , just hangs and the other hangs and keyboard light flashes. I wonderd if maybe any errors were reported to some sort of system log file??

tthanks
Paul

[trommaster]

/var/log
/var/log/messages will prolly be what you want
you need to be root to read it

[flandercan]

Ok i found that fine,

I can not get into the one system to look, it crashed so i rebooted it, it seemed to work fine although crashed again in the night, now when rebooting it just says

kernel panic VFS could not mount root 0.0 :

even if i try to run the rescue i get the same message, and even if i pretend to do a re-install , it crashes before it get to the gui install!

does anybody know what this means please dont say ive lost everything?? I only installed the system a week ago and havent yet plugged in the dlt!! I just got it running nice as well!!!!!

thanks
Paul

[trommaster]

dead hdd?
does it show up in the bios?
hurm, well it should if it can get the boot loader working...

[flandercan]

its 1 scsi disk, boots up and the scsi card detects the disk. It goes to gurb and starts to load , i now see the message

kernel panic : could not find init

it sounds to me like the root partition has gone, or the root section of the disk is damaged is it easy enough to drop another disk in , reinstall it and then pull the data from the other partitions on the dead disk?

What i mean is i can put another disk in and re-install but i have never then added another disk with linux partitions on it and read it from the running os??

hope that makes sense



thanks
Paul

[friskydrifter]

I'm not sure what you are thinking but i think you are suggesting putting in another HDD then reinstalling Linux. Then adding the old HDD, mounting it and ripping the old data off?

Yes you can, provided the old HDD works for a while.
I dont think there is a conflict of directory names when its a different partition.

Or do you mean something else?

[trommaster]

kernel panic : could not find init

eeek
it does sound like a dead/dying disk drive

[flandercan]

(friskdrifter)

Yes thats what i was asking, i will have a go at this tonight,

thanks all for helping:-)

paul

[flandercan]

Woooohooooo i found the problem, it may be work keeping a note of this one, the error was

Kernel Panic: VFS could not mount root:

I thought maybe the root partition on the disk was messed up esp as it also said it could not locate the INIT. tab file but after all the hassle trying to re-install , repair and everything else , i found it was a faulty ram chip!!!

thanks for your help guys

Paul