My Raspberry Pi won't boot. Was fine yesterday.

[ashwith]

I got my Raspberry Pi yesterday along with a SD card with Debian pre-installed. Things worked fine till today morning. Now I get the following message:

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kernel panic - not syncing: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/init.txt for guidance.

I read that kernel panics happen if the keyboard or mouse isn't supported. I disconnected both of them and I still got the above message. Here is a photo of my screen: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2862571/DSC_0629.JPG. Could some one please help me out?

Thanks!

[snaipperi]

Did you do any software upgrades? The panic does happen at a point, where the USB probe would usually detect the ethernet connection. Suggest trying to remove ethernet cable too, though I'm doubtful it will be of any use.

dmesg snip from a working boot

...
Freeing init memory: 124K
usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0424, idProduct=9512
usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-1:1.0: 3 ports detected
<-- your kernel panic occurs here -->
usb 1-1.1: new high speed USB device number 3 using dwc_otg
usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0424, idProduct=ec00
usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0 smsc95xx v1.0.4 smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: register 'smsc95xx' at usb-bcm2708_usb-1.1, smsc95xx USB 2.0 Ethernet, b8:27:eb:b5:23:00
...

[ashwith]

Hi snaipperi,

No I did not install any software updates unless it happens automatically. Actually this message appeared with the ethernet cable unplugged.

From what I remember this is what I did today morning:

1. Switched on the Raspberry Pi - without the Ethernet cable. It worked the first time.
2. Logged in and tried to use scratch. When I tried saving the file I got an error saying (not the exact message) the program was unable to write to the disk.
3. Next, I switched off the board and removed the SD card to see if I had locked it by mistake. It wasn't locked. I remember that I also toggled that small lock switch once.
4. After this, every subsequent boot fails with the error message.

[snaipperi]

The error could be caused when the kernel is unable to find the root file system. This would mean something is wrong with the SD card, such as corrupted file system. However I don't see any errors in the picture you posted. The root file system seems to be mounted (VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) on device 179:2).

There seems to be 3 partitions on your SD card. I'm not sure about the Debian image, but at least Arch Linux ARM has only 2 partitions by default.

If you have access to a working linux OS, I'd try mounting and visually checking the overall contents of partition 2 of the SD card.

[ashwith]

I do have Fedora on my desktop but I don't have a card reader right now. Is there a way to read the card through the Raspberry Pi?
I'll be buying one tomorrow. I'll check the SD card and post back if I see anything. I'll also get another card and see if that works. My biggest worry is if something happened to the board itself

[ashwith]

I now have a card reader. I can see the following partitions on my card:

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Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  79.7MB  78.6MB  primary  fat32           lba
 2      80.7MB  1748MB  1667MB  primary  ext4
 3      1749MB  1949MB  200MB   primary  linux-swap(v1)

Here is a screenshot showing the contents of the fat32 and ext4 partitions. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2862571/sd-card.png

Is there anything odd here?

I'll now flash another card with debian and report back what happens.

[ashwith]

Flashing a new card worked. Re-flashing the card I bought along with the Raspberry Pi also worked. So it was a problem with the SD Card after all. I'm glad I didn't damage my board . Thanks for all the help snaipperi! . I'll use my second card for Arch now.

I wonder what really happened. The only significant thing I remember is changing my keyboard settings to US.

[xtramural]

I wonder what really happened. The only significant thing I remember is changing my keyboard settings to US.

If you pulled the plug on the Pi without an orderly shutdown - or at the least a 'sync' - this may have corrupted the card/filesystem.

[ashwith]

Hmmm. I think I did do that. I guess that explains it. Thank you xtramural!

[ethzero]

Not sure if this is related but I've spent a day tracing a similar "fine before, no joy now" issue with Arch Linux up until 3.???.17

Today's task was to simply use my duplicate SD card to make a fresh install using the "archlinuxarm-29-04-2012.img" image, install, reboot, resize partition, reboot, etc right up to the eventual

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pacman -Syu

to bring the system to date inclusive of RPI firmware and kernel updates and boom...

On reboot, just a nice rainbow screen and not a flicker of an "OK" led to suggest it's gonna go any further anytime soon.

The previous, and now precious, SD card with the slightly older ArchLinux works just fine.

I guess that as Arch Linux and the RPi support files appear to be updated very frequently I'll just hang fire for a further update to skip over this hiccup.

[ashwith]

Hi ethzero, are you saying that you are getting a blank screen with Arch? If yes, I had the same problem as well. This is how you fix it: http://elinux.org/ArchLinux_Install_Gui ... stallation

[ethzero]

Hi ashwith, unfortunately not a black screen but a that rainbow test card - no matter as this (even after been left for +10mins) doesn't yield any network connectivity to SSH in to it so while noted, that url's "Dealing with a Black Screen" isn't much good to me :/

Tomorrow if I have time I'm going to do a package-by-package reboot of the system essentially drip feeding the "pacman -Syu". My bet is that as the RPi is hanging *at* the Rainbox test screen, it's a kernel problem is something very early/low level.

Cheers for the feedback!