Installation media freezing

Infrastructure
1

I think it is most unlikely that nobody else has run into this But I am a very elderly operator on a fairly elderly machine.
I am trying to install Rocky Linux 9. I have not succeeded as yet. Installation freezes with the following message,
[4. 9530561]—[end kernel panic-not syncing:attempting to kill init ! exit code = 0x00007f00]

This appears to happen to all recent RedHat derivants. Versions prior to 2022 appear not to be effected. Centos Stream 9, AlmaLinux 9 & RockyLinux 9 all fail to pass the pretest. I have been able to install RockyLinux 8.6 and despite the warnings against doing so am trying to upgrade to Rocky Linux 9. Derivants of Debian & ArchLinux installl without problems. I have three operating systems on my machine. I have reformatte my hard drives without curing the problem.
Does anybody know of a solution to this problem ?
Paddy Walker

2

The problem is that RHEL set the base CPU limit to x86_64_v2 and sse4.2. You can read more about it here: RHEL9 Raises Base Target For x86_64 CPUs Plus Possible Optimized Libraries With glibc-hwcaps - Phoronix but it has been encountered by others on this forum already.

So, which as you found, all the derivatives fail to install. If you are using old hardware, that doesn’t support this, then you won’t be able to install any of them, as you’ve found out. I’m only assuming this is the case, since you say Rocky 8.6 installs and works. In which case upgrading will just mean you reboot and end up with the same error on the screen from the ISO. The full error message from the screen above the end kernel panic line would hint more at where it might be, so we would need the full error message to be 100% sure. But I’m hedging my bets on the CPU not being supported, older than what RHEL9/Rocky 9 expects.

1 Like