Ok, i need help.

[Game master pro]

My partitions are all stuffed up. Help me =(

I have slackware installon on hdd3
ubuntu on hdd4 (doesnt work, it stuffed up ages ago)
winblows98se on hda1
more room for windows (fat32) hdd1

Now, i tried booting slackware, and i got a "Kernel panic: no init found. Try passing inti = option to kernel" or something like that. I booted into knoppix to try doing that, and noticed in my hdd3 partition i have a "Program files", "Downloads", and "recycled" in the root of it, no /mnt or /dev or /usr or /etc just those, No wonder it's not working! And in my hdd1 partition, which is supposed to be like that, is fine, there is "Program files", "Download", "recycled" and "Music" and other stuff, just like normal, What happened to slackware? the only thing i have done is removed a cd drive, which has hdb, but how could that of done anything to my partitions, please help, i spent sooo long getting slack to work how i like it.

[Nerderello]

I've seen the init problem before. I happened when the kernel (which was found successfully in the /boot folder - partition (if you made the /boot folder a separate partition)) expected to have an initrd.img file, but couldn't find it.

Reasons for not finding the initrd.img file are:-
1. you spelt it wrong in the /boot/grub/grub.conf or /etc/lilo.conf
2. the file has been deleted
3. the partition containing the initrd.img was not found (unlikely)
4. Something has f###ed your /boot folder

Nerderello

[Game master pro]

I do not have /boot on a seperate partition, there all on the same thing. And i use lilo. And i figured that the /boot folder is stuffed because it's not there, and either is anything else but a Program files, Downloads and recycled. But those are windows folders. Why would windows stuff up my partition, and a better question. How? It doesn't even know it's there. Is there any way i can recover /home , or at least the /etc so i don't have to configure everything again, (which took like a month :P)

[Game master pro]

Any more suggestions?

[kern]

boot off the slackware cd then

fdisk -l /dev/hdd to show your partition layout, fsck the ext3 slackware partition. see if theres anything wrong with it.

(why is it on hdd anyway?)

[Nerderello]

the kernel that is complaining that it cannot find an init, and is so panicing, lives in the /boot folder.

So, if you have a kernel that is panicing, you should also have a /boot folder.

Nerderello

[bryansmith]

Like Nerderello said, if the kernel is panicing, it must be panicing from somewhere.

Do the folders show up when you do:

ls -a

Have you changed lilo.conf recently? If you find the /etc folder, could you post the lilo.conf?

Bryan

[Game master pro]

I don't think you get what i'm saying, slack is on hdd3 and hdd1 has randomly copied itself to hdd3 slackware is not existant there is no /boot folder because there is no /

Anyway, i think i know what the problem is. I talked to my friend who knows lots 'bout computers, (and i mean lots, as in he made his own motherboard once :S)
And he told me my RAM is stuffed, so he gave me new ramy sticks (heh, ramy ) and i ran memtest86 (which he just randomly had lying around on a floppy) and i ran it (without errors, so he thinks it might be a motherboard problem, and it can't be fixed, he gave me a long lecture about this, it went for about an hour or so :P) So, i don't know what i'm going to do, i'm gonna give him hdd so he can completely format it, then i'm gonna backup everything on hda then just get a new computer xD

[CodeRoot]

If you have important data on any of your drives, don't be too quick to format...

You should be able to temporarily install and mount any/all of your drives (one at a time, if necessary) on another working Linux box and examine the drive(s) there...

[kern]

yep, boot off a live cd like we said before, or slack cd 1

mount up the partitions, setup some samba or nfs shares, back it up over the network (assuming you have another pc) or burn it to cd.