How do you clear a botched kernel on a PPC system?

[Joel Rees]

On Sep 27, 2009, at 3:20 AM,  a helpful person wrote me off-list:

(Leaving out the name in case the off-list was intentional. Or maybe  
it was because it was a reply to my mis-post to the -test-list.)

> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 07:19:45PM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
>>
>> it tells me that I should try passing in the init= parameter. I tried
>> several permutations of what I thought was the probable syntax,
>>
>> boot: hd:3,/vmlinuz-2.6.29.5-191.fc11.ppc init=/
>> initrd-2.6.29.5-191.fc11.ppc.img
> yh
> Err..., init is a program you are running first.  If everything
> else failed try 'init=/bin/bash'

Okay, [...] init=/bin/bash
...
VFS: mounted root [and something I missed as it rebooted.]
Freeing unused kernel memory: 332k init
Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Failed to execute /bin/bash. Attempting defaults. . .
Kernel panic. - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option  
to kernel.
Rebooting in 180 seconds.

> Don't you have some earlier kernel which still boots?  If that fails
> too then maybe indeed your /sbin/init is messed up but that would
> have nothing to do with kernels.


The previous kernel did work, as I mentioned in another post, but  
only when I went in, renamed it (and the three other files) and so  
forth, as I described in the other post. I've yum remove-d  
kernel-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.ppc, and so it boots the old kernel and seems  
to run okay.

So if the init= parameter is not supposed to be the initrd file, the  
bug in yaboot (under this ibook's openfirmware) might be that it's  
trying to pass an init= parameter when none is specified on the boot  
line. Hmm.

I got a message back from the developers, from a comment I left where  
someone else reported this bug. Getting a fixed kernel is going to  
take a little time, they say.

In the meantime, I'm avoiding updating, to keep the kernel at the  
previous level, and hoping the kernel/userland level mismatch will  
not bomb me out of anything important.

Thanks.
Joel Rees