"Kernel Too Old"

[Мастер]

WTF? I've never seen this error before.

[Enzo]

Popcorn won't pop? What...?

[tubeswell]

Too old for this party

[Lance]

Anticipate “kernel too old” errors between 2.6.16 and 2.6.26 kernel versions

[Enzo]

Why, sure, I was thinking that myself too...

[Мастер]

Anticipate “kernel too old” errors between 2.6.16 and 2.6.26 kernel versions

I have a dual boot Windows XP/Linux system. The Windows is so painfully slow I can barely stand it (I think the computer is from 2007).

Tried to boot up in Linux, but it seems the root password is not what I was expecting it to be. After several attempts, I realised I must have changed it to something new, and then (after not using the Linux partition for some time), forgot what it was. I could log in as a regular user, just not as root.

So I burned a bootable Linux CD (which was an adventure in and of itself), and booted from it.

The idea now was to mount the Linux partition on "/mnt", and then run the command "chroot /mnt passwd".

For those not familiar, "passwd" is the command in Linux (and other Unices) to change the password. When logged in as the root user (which I was, when booted from the CD), it would change the password of the root user. So I could change it to something which I new.

But, if one just executes the command "passwd", it changes the password stored in the /etc/shadow file (in encrypted form), which, when booted from the CD, is a file in the virtual file system created when the CD system starts up. What I want is for the password in the /etc/shadow file on the hard disk to be changed. So the "chroot /mnt <command>" tells the system to change the root of the file system to /mnt (where the hard disk is mounted) when executing the password command; that way, the /etc/shadow file changed would be the one on the hard disk, not the one in the virtual file system the CD system creates when booting.

But when I try the "chroot /mnt passwd', I got "kernel too old". The system on the hard disk is much newer than the system on the CD. So I think what happened is, it tried to run the "passwd" command on the hard disk, from the new system. That program then did some check, and determined it was running on a system with an old kernel (since the kernel would be from the CD system). It then bails, since it uses some features which the old kernel doesn't have available. At least, that's what I think happened.

I was able to solve the problem in a rather simple way - just execute the "passwd" command. That changed the entry in the /etc/passwd in the virtual file system in memory, the one created by the CD-based Linux system. I then just ran a text editor, and copied the line for the "root" user in this file to the /etc/passwd file on the hard disk. That actually worked, and I can now access my Linux system again.

[Lance]

That makes perfect sense.

I've used a bootable Windows XP based CD utility to repair things in Windows 7 and sometimes it will fail for similar reasons even though the verbiage is quite different.

[MM_Dandy]

I wholly recommend HIren's Boot CD.

[Мастер]

That makes perfect sense.

I've used a bootable Windows XP based CD utility to repair things in Windows 7 and sometimes it will fail for similar reasons even though the verbiage is quite different.

I've heard it's pretty tough to get Windows to boot from anything other than an internal hard disk - is that true?

I wholly recommend HIren's Boot CD.

It looks like it is Windows-based - is that correct?

[MM_Dandy]

That makes perfect sense.

I've used a bootable Windows XP based CD utility to repair things in Windows 7 and sometimes it will fail for similar reasons even though the verbiage is quite different.

I've heard it's pretty tough to get Windows to boot from anything other than an internal hard disk - is that true?

I haven't attempted anything like that since Windows 98se, myself (and wasn't so difficult) - but I'm pretty sure this is a fair statement, now. However...

I wholly recommend HIren's Boot CD.

It looks like it is Windows-based - is that correct?

Unless it's been changed drastically between 14 and 15, it isn't. I suppose that most of the time, it's used to diagnose/fix Windows - thus, the high amount of Windows-related comments in the release notes (IE: "BattStat 0.99b: Battery Status monitor and power management freeware for Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 x86/x64."). At any rate, I've used it on a Mandriva system for password reset/recovery before.

Edit: I should add that that is the only non-Windows use I've made of it so far. I'll have to dig it out and actually see how much of it is actually geared for Windows-only use.

[Lance]

I've heard it's pretty tough to get Windows to boot from anything other than an internal hard disk - is that true?

Not anymore, and it gets easier all the time. You can have a full, plug and play installation of Windows 7 on a USB flash drive that you can plug in, boot from and go. You could do it with XP too, but you had to jump through some hoops to get it to work right.