Kernel panic: no init found

[--JC <jwc0@xxxxxxxxx>]

Saw the following this afternoon while booting up Shrike (2.4.20-13.9) -

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev ide0 (3,3)
mount: error 22 mounting ext3
pivotroot: pivot_root(sysroot./sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
freeing unused kernel memory 132k bytes
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

It looks to me like something on the ext3 filesystem for root (/) got 
clobbered.  When I start Partition Magic 8 from diskette, it tells me it's 
now an ext2 filesystem - though this may not completely correct.  Partition 
Magic is a Windows product and I only use it for Linux from diskette boot.

This leads me to some questions -

1. If it was downgraded from ext3 to ext2, does this mean that I've lost 
the journalling part of the ext3 filesystem? Would this explain the mount 
error 22 message while mounting the ext3?

2. What is the best way to recover from this?  Is passing some init= option 
to the kernel a viable alternative?  What are some of the options I could 
attempt to pass in with init= ??

3. Can I recover the journal entries and rebuild the ext3?

4. Is it best to start from a disk image backup (which is about eight days 
old)?

The kernel panic also happens with the recovery diskette.  And FWIW, I 
think I may have caused the problem myself by running an fsck while in 
multi-user mode.  Live and learn, I guess.  fsck did warn me, but I was 
trying to resolve some weird differences I was seeing in file system 
usage.  I didn't want to make any filesystem changes, I just wanted to see 
what it would tell me.  :-(

Any help would be appreciated, I am in over my head right now.  Thanks in 
advance.

Rgds,
~>jc ** jeffrey w comer




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