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From: ellis@ultra.dec.com
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: panic: iinit
Message-ID: <4418@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Fri, 25-Jul-86 11:52:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.4418
Posted: Fri Jul 25 11:52:39 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jul-86 22:09:58 EDT
Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 21

Posted: 23 Jul 86 17:13:30 GMT

dicome!salmi ran into trouble booting from a backup root filesystem.
He copied /dev/ra0a to /dev/ra2a (via dump/restore), then attempted
to boot from /dev/ra2a.  The system printed out the message "panic: iinit"
and immediately tried to reboot again, resulting in a loop.

The key is that /vmunix (the file containing the executable kernel)
has built into it configuration information telling it that certain files 
it requires to operate are mounted on /dev/ra0a.

You can't simply reboot a working unix from /dev/ra2a without having 
/dev/ra0a around.  You need to mount the disk pack with the backup root 
filesystem into the /dev/ra0a drive (or, instead of swapping packs, 
just swap the unit-number plugs on the drives if your drives allow 
this -- much easier).

David Ellis
Digital Equipment Corporation, Littleton MA         617-486-6784
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