Ubuntu – kernel panic not syncing vfs unable to mount root fs on unknown block oo swapper not tainted

kernel

I updated my laptop (Ubuntu) to 11.10 and I don't know what went wrong that when I restarted the computer It would start and it would only tell me.

kernel panic not syncing vfs unable to mount root fs on unknown block
oo swapper not tainted…

I am a new user and I have no idea what to do. Any ideas?

Best Answer

You are missing the initramfs for that kernel. Choose another kernel from the grub menu, or run update-initramfs -u -k version to generate the initrd for version then update-grub.

Boot to a LiveCD, select Try Ubuntu and then open a a terminal. Run the following:

sudo fdisk -l

This will show us what partitions are available. You need to look for your main Ubuntu partition. On most fresh-installed systems this will be sda1 but it really could be anything. Substitude sda1 in the following with whatever you decide is right in the fdisk output.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo mount --bind /run /mnt/run
sudo chroot /mnt

And now you can run update-initramfs and update-grub with out errors and that should fix everything. Reboot without the CD in and you should land on your Ubuntu desktop.

Additionally, after the chroot:

cp -r /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pango /usr/lib/

update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.38-8-generic #(or your version)
update-grub2

(You can find a list if installed kernels using: dpkg --list | grep linux-image) And reboot your system

Related Question