# Kernel Panic after changing Password from rescue cd

## jacksbargainbin

Hi All,

I have to do some work on our server which has Gentoo installed on it but the previous person that supported it no longer works here. The also left no documentation and I am unable to log into the server. I thought well quick and easy I booted of a system Rescue CD mounted the root drive and removed the root password in between the :: in /etc/shadow. There was a second shadow file listed that I saw before I opened any files and was unsure if it was like a shadow of the shadow so I opened and changed it as well. I unmounted and rebooted and now have a kernel panic.

Not able to cut and paste error but all looks good until it gets to scanning Logical Volumes.

It says Volume group "main" not found and then the typical errors down to Kernel Panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

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## gerard27

Did you save a copy of the files you modified?

If you didn't you're in a lot of trouble.

Why did you do this?

With the rescuecd running you should have chrooted into the system and then issued

```

passwd
```

You would be prompted to enter a password.

After that you'd be asked to repeat the password.

Then you could exit chroot,reboot w/o the rescuecd and login as root.

You might try the above but I don't know if it'll work.

Gerard.

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## jacksbargainbin

I did this following instructions that I found. Did not realize at the time it would cause a kernel panic by doing this. So no chance of getting it to boot again?

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## jacksbargainbin

Tried the above and it changed the password but still will not boot.

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## gerard27

Well not knowing the setup etc. of this box I have no idea what to advice.

Gerard.

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## jacksbargainbin

As I have never actually used this system or log in I do not have any information either. The tech that supported it is no longer here and it was shelved. Tell me what you need and I will mount the drives and get the information off. Thanks

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## houtworm

Yesterday I had also a kernel panic.

KDE was updated and also the kernel to gentoo-3.1.4, so I rebooted to make the new kernel active. But... kernel panic

Ok, tried the 'old' kernel gentoo-3.1.0, but also kernel panic. So it wasn't the kernel.

I had just looked the uptime before shutting down and that was 10 days.

So I started with knoppix, chrooted into my gentoo system, looked into /var/db/pkg/sys* which packages had been updated the last 10 days and put those packages into package.mask and downgraded those packages. 

Then my system booted up again  :Smile: 

So if anything else fails, you can try that. See how old the kernel is and downgrade everything that is newer, starting with the sys* stuff.

Perhaps I will upgrade those packages again this weekend, to see which package caused the trouble, but for now I will enjoy my running system  :Smile: 

--Kees

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## NeddySeagoon

jacksbargainbin,

Lets start at the beginning then.  I suspect that changing the password has nothing to do with the boot failure.

Boot with a liveCD, (SystemRescueCD is good) mount your target systems partitions. Then post the output of the following commands, executed from outside the chroot.

```
ls -l /mnt/gentoo/boot

cat /mnt/gentoo/boot/grub.conf

cat /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab

lspci

df -T

fdisk -l
```

From inside the chroot

```
emerge --info
```

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