3.4.0-rc1: No init found

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Tue, 2012-04-03 at 00:20 -0700, Christian Kujau wrote:
> Going from 3.3-rc7 to 3.4-rc1 (with "make oldconfig" inbetween) did not 
> go well on this PowerBook G4 machine:
> 
> Apr  2 15:18:23 [   8.318816] EXT4-fs (hda6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
> Apr  2 15:18:23 [   8.320286] VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) readonly on device 3:6.
> Apr  2 15:18:23 [   8.341555] devtmpfs: mounted
> Apr  2 15:18:23 [   8.343384] Freeing unused kernel memory: 204k freed
> Apr  2 15:18:23 [   8.457056] Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/init.txt for guidance.
> Apr  2 15:18:23 [   8.459936] Rebooting in 180 seconds..

I have observed this randomly on the G5 ... sometimes, if I try again,
it works... it's very very odd. There is some kind of race maybe with
async startup ? Or a problem with the vfs path walking ? It's certainly
not easily reproducable for me, it goes away from one boot to the next.

It also happens sometimes with an initramfs (cpio), it's not specific to
ext{2,3,4}.

Cheers,
Ben.

> No bootoptions were changed, no disks swapped, no partitions altered 
> whatsoever. Full .config & dmesg:
> 
>  http://nerdbynature.de/bits/3.4.0-rc1/init/
> 
> Thanks,
> Christian.
> 
> PS: Unfortunately I cannot boot into the old (3.3-rc7) kernel 
>     right now (which is still installed via "yaboot" and present in
>     /boot), because of this: 
>     http://nerdbynature.de/bits/3.4.0-rc1/init/mac-invalid-memory.JPG
>     Booting into Debian's "squeeze" kernel (2.6.32) which resides in
>     the same /boot directory succeeds.

Hrm, did it used to boot ? Can you do printenv in OF and tell me what
your load-base, real-base, virt-base etc... are ?

Might also be worth updating yaboot, debian should have 1.3.16 nowadays.

Cheers,
Ben.