hangs after "Freeing unused kernel memory"

[Linas Vepstas]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 04:00:09PM -0800, Siva Prasad wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This sounds like a familiar problem, but could not get answers in posts
> that came up in google search.
> 
> My system hangs after printing the message "Freeing unused kernel
> memory". It should execute init after that, but not sure what exactly is
> happening. Appreciate if some one can throw few ideas to try out.

It might not be a hang, it might be simply that you loose the console.
If this is a redhat system, and you didn't tweak initrd and udev just 
right, this can happen.

Try doing this:

      mount --bind / /mnt
      cp -a /dev/null /mnt/dev
      cp -a /dev/console /mnt/dev
      cp -a /dev/hv* /mnt/dev
      umount /mnt

> Seems it is actually hanging when it makes the call "
> run_init_process(ramdisk_execute_command)" in init/main.c

Then again, your initrd might be corrupted.

--linas