[gentoo-user] kernel panic -- finding proper config diff

[Maxim Wexler <maxim.wexler@gmail.com>]

Hi group,

Did linux#make menuconfig followed by linux# make && make
modules_install on the .2.6.30-gentoo-r7 sources. And copied over the
new kernel and rebooted.

The kernel panicked. The relevant messages are:

<...>
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly on device 8:1,
Freeing unused kernel memory: 276k freed
Warning: unable to open an initial console
Kernel panic - not syncing. No init found. Try passing init=option to kernel.
Pid: 1. comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.30-gentoo-r7 #2
Call Trace:
 [<c0479986>] ? printk+0xf/0x11
 [<c04798dc>]  panic+0x39/0xd4
 [<c020135z>]  init_post+0x13c/0x13e
 [<c05b62dc>]  kernel_init+0x148/0x152
 [<c05b6194>] ? kernel_init+0x0/0x152
 [<c02033cf>]  kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10


So far I've tried adding 'init=/bin/bash' and 'init=/sbin/init' to the
command line. No help. Someone in a forum suggested chrooting and
emerging sysvinit. But that's already installed.

There's a million hits on google for this error message with about as
many solutions.

Assuming it has something to do with my kernel config, I tried running
$diff -y on the two configs but at approx. 2600 lines per file I'm
going to need some advice on what to zero in on.

I tried to keep the new config as same as the old. But there's a lot
of new features, weird stuff like CONFIG_X86_32_LAZY_GS=y and the new
decompression protocol.


Maxim