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<[email protected]> |
On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Ellis D. Cooper wrote:
> Dear Alex Butcher. You wrote
>
> > I found the error message by grep'ing over the kernel source tree. By
> > reading the source code, I was able to find the commands the kernel looks
> > for on boot.
>
> This is exactly the sort of precision advice I hoped for. I am using the
> command
>
> grep "Kernel panic" -r *.*
>
> on say, /usr/src, to no avail. I think I am too simpleminded with that
> search.
Point 1: "Kernel panic" is a very common phrase in the Linux kernel source.
It's used in comments and elsewhere. You'll get a lot of false positives.
Point 2: Error messages that you, the user, sees, aren't always assembled in
one place, even if they appear on a single line. In this case, 'Kernel
panic' is generated by one function, 'No init found. Try passing init=
option to kernel.' by another.
Point 3: Case insensitive use of grep (-i switch) can be useful,
particularly if you can't remember whether you got the case right when you
wrote the error message down. (You did in this case, so no problems there -
just an advisory).
Point 4: As the length of the string you search for increases, so the
chance of typos, and points 2 and 3 above, increases. Pick something short,
but distinctive-looking. Too short, of course ("init") and it'll be found
everywhere.
Point 5: UNIX is not DOS. '*.*' is not the universal wildcard here, it's
just '*'. The grep command you issued will only search files and recurse
down directory structures that have at least one '.' in the name. As there
are no directories under /usr/src/linux that match this expression, grep
won't recurse.
Hopefully this explains why my choice of grep command was
grep -i -r 'No init found' .
executed from /usr/src/linux
> I will keep on plugging away. In xconfig I just did a more careful
> look and found that under "File System" it says N for "Ext3 Journalling
> file system support". Gee, is that maybe the source of my problem? (Duhhh!)
Could well be. ;-)
> You asked,
>
> >If you just want a system to use and do Real Work on, why are you
> >compiling kernels at all?
>
> I currently do "Real Work" with Windows 98, 2000, and XP. With no
> disrespect intended, I don't believe Linux is ready for me yet.
I'm not going to argue the point, but it depends what you need to do. I'd
say that for ~80% of desktop computer usage (i.e. email, web, office, IM,
MP3) Linux (Red Hat's distro, at least) is there. If you need to run
specific applications (Autocad, Quark, ...) it's probably not, though you
may be able to find similar enough applications that allow you to achieve
the same end-result.
> Thanks again for your patient and helpful consideration.
>
> Sincerely,
> EDC
Best Regards,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950 <http://www.assursys.com/>