Kernel panic booting CentOS 5 image in VirtualBox

09
2013-08
  • Andy

    I'm using VirtualBox, and have a vdi. It works fine on the virtual machine I originally configured for it, but if I clone it (with VBoxManage clonehd) or just copy it, create a new VM and boot it, I always get the same errors:

    mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
...
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

    Anyone know how I can fix this?

    The VDI is an image of a clean system that I want to keep reusing to save me having to keep installing the OS into a new empty VDI.

    • Answers
  • Peter McNeil

    The problem is the layout of the hard disks changed. This is probably because the .vdi hard disk is now attached to the sata controller instead of the ide controller. just disconnect from the sata controller in the settings and reconnect to the ide controller then reboot.

  • Andy

    Probably an unfixed bug:

    http://www.virtualbox.de/ticket/2813


    • Related Question

    operating systems - What is a kernel panic?
  • RCIX

    I know that this sounds like a LMGTFY question but i thought i'd ask it so that google actually turns up (more) good results. What is it?


    • Related Answers
  • John T

    A kernel panic takes place when an Operating System detects a fatal error that it cannot recover from. This is a term specific to UNIX and UNIX-like Operating Systems (Linux, OSX, etc). The Windows term is a "STOP Error", and the OS will make a memory crash dump and write to the system log files, you may even get the well known "Blue screen of death".

    The wikipedia article covers it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_panic

  • Dan Walker

    A kernel panic is when the kernel (the very base of your operating system that talks to the hardware) has a problem that it can't recover from without being restarted. Because the kernel is at such a low level, the only way to restart the kernel is to restart the entire computer.

  • hasen j

    It's the Linux (and UNIX) equivalent of the infamous BSoD (Blue Screen of Death).

    From wikipedia's Kernel Panic page:

    A kernel panic is an action taken by an operating system upon detecting an internal fatal error from which it cannot safely recover. The term is largely specific to Unix and Unix-like systems; for Microsoft Windows operating systems the equivalent term is ‘Stop error’ (or, colloquially, ‘Blue Screen of Death’).

  • nik

    Google does turn up good results -- Wikipedia Kernel Panic page