Re: Debian not installing on computer, "killing interrupt handler" error

I demand that mike3 may or may not have written...

On Mar 13, 8:12 pm, Darren Salt wrote:
I demand that mike3 may or may not have written...
I was trying to install Debian GNU/Linux on a Sun computer (Sun Blade 100
with UltraSPARC IIe CPU @ 500MHz), and when installing the thing fails at
the step "formatting partitions" with a "Kernel panic: not syncing - Aiee!
Killing interrupt handler!" error (not sure if that's the exact phrasing
but it's close enough.). What gives here?

You need everything from the initial 'oops' or 'BUG' (or whatever) line
up to the kernel panic line - register dump, stack trace, loaded modules
[snip]
http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/serial-console.txt
http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/networking/netconsole.txt

You should take this, complete with the captured panic and hardware
configuration, to the relevant Debian mailing list(s) - debian-sparc seems
like a good place to start; they're more likely to know what to do than
random people here, such as me.

It just said that message, I didn't get any more information on the screen.

Have you tried again, this time with one of the logging boot options
(documentation for which is at the above URLs)? You really should be getting
more than just that one line, though ‒ I did, for an apparently random IPv4
failure.

Nor can I just "cut + paste" it into a file (I suppose I could take a
picture of the screen with a webcam... would that help?).

Possibly. However, one line saying "kernel panic" is of no real use.

How can I get the logs off the system and onto the internet,

The best (most complete) way is to capture it by logging to another computer;
you'll need one of those boot options. In the case of a kernel panic, you can
be sure that the panic won't appear in any log files on the affected computer
:-)

(FWIW, I used netconsole to capture a panic recently. It turned out to be a
NULL dereference in some IPv4 code in interrupt context.)

and how to register for the lists (I tried posting to the newsgroups but
the moderator rejected my post because I was not registered and I deleted
the email with the registration instructions! darn :( )?

http://lists.debian.org/ has all of the information that you need.

Another thing that you could do is to report a bug; but for that, it'll help
to know which linux-image-* package the running kernel is from. (See
http://bugs.debian.org/ for more information; check for bugs which match your
problem before reporting.)

--
| Darren Salt | linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + Output *more* particulate pollutants. BUFFER AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING.

No matter what they're talking about, they're talking about money.
.

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