Kernel panic after upgrade

[rmarmen]

I have been running Kubuntu 5.10 for several months on a via mini-itx mainboard with lvm2 on top of software raid. I have had no problems.

I recently upgraded the system to Dapper by changing the etc sources list. The system was working fine across several reboots, and everything appears stable.

Suddenly, I get a kernel panic; The infamous

kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown block

If anyone has any information on how to recover from this problem, I'd appreciate being educated.

I'd also like to know which live CDs can be used to mount the LVM volumes and copy them to alternate disks. I've decided to take a step back and use software raid on top of reiserfs filesystem. The complexity of lvm including recovery does not compensate for its maintenance advantages. Disks are so large now, I am simply going to get bigger disks each time I need to upgrade.

If I was using a terrabyte, then I'd reconsider.

Thanks in advance for your help.

rob...

[GreatBunzinni]

Re: Kernel panic after upgrade

Forgive me for not helping you much but have you tried installing from scratch? You can specify what partition you want to format and through that you can have a clean install while preserving the application's options (the /home partition).

[rmarmen]

Re: Kernel panic after upgrade

I just picked up an additional 2 drives and I am doing a new install on one of the drives from the Kubuntu desktop livecd. The second drive will be used to make a temporary archive of the data on non-lvm partitions.

Fortunately the livecd does recognize and allow the mounting of the lvm partitions. It makes an adequate rescue disk. The alternate livecd also recognizes the lvm partitions.

I'll move the single drive into another system and migrate my desktop there. Once I am back up and running, I can focus on fixing the original system.

There are references in the ubuntu forums that this problem has surfaced in the past. The perscribed fixes are somewhat involved and I am hoping for a simpler approach.

I'll post the results as I find them.

rob...