Or the machine is cold… colder also means smaller according to heat expansion, so the connection may be looser…
(My ideas are just shots in the dark… 
)
3 Likes
elements 25a2 is a disk @Rosika told us in the first post.
so it looks like disk or usb hardware issues.
2 Likes
Hi all and thank you so much for your many responses, 
You´re all so kind.
@JoelA :
Thanks you for your suggestion. That might be it (I´m afraid).
Uh, uh. I´ m going to have to do some research on it first.
It´s not the kind of thing I particularly like to do… 
.
Also: thanks for the link. I will read through the article.
On the contrary, László.
I use a standing desk for all of my equipment. Once I got all devices wired there´s no need to move anything at all. It´s pretty static that way. It´s been this way for months.
Thanks for your suggestion though.
Well, that certainly is the case.
As it´s getting colder by the day (winter is approaching) the machine certainly is colder than during summer time.
Of course the temperature varies (more or less slightly) on a daily basis. Right now it´s 52°F (11.1°C) here.
@nevj :
That´s my external HDD where the Linux Lite OS installation resides.
I already did that. No errors there.
Thanks a lot, Neville.
@easyt50 :
thanks so much to as well, Howard.
Great. Thanks.
I also spent a lot of time researching that error message.
Many results, as with you, but none of them really seemed to help me.
There is an EFI partition but is not on the external HDD but on the internal one.
It was recognized at the installation time of Linux Lite and refers to the WIN8.1 setup on the internal disk.
So I don´t think the statement applies here.
Thank you for providing so many paths to try out. I´ll see what I can do.
At least for the next few days I´ll probably go down that path.
In fact that´s the most curious thing of all:
The 2nd attempt worked immediately, and I didn´t even touch any cable or any of the peripherals. 
Today it worked successfully right from the start.
Hmm, it almost seems that way, doesn´t it?
I wonder why…
Thanks, of course I´ll report back as soon as I come up with anything new.
@ all:
Well, most of you have pointed out that the CMOS battery might be worth replacing.
That of course is one of the scenarios I dread the most. 
I´ve never tinkered with hardware, except for peripherals, of course.
Here are some things to consider:
- So I would have to open the chassis of the PC.
- Then I´d have to find out where the CMOS battery is
- I hope it´s not soldered on. That would be catastrophic.
- I´d have to replace it. How would I know what kind it is beforehand
I already have some new ‘CR2032’ cells available (3V). I hope that´s the correct type, but I can´t be sure. - Do I need antistatic wrist-band/-mat
I don´t have that. Would have to get hold of it first
Oh dear, oh dear. All that doesn´t sound good.
The PC is 10 ys of age now. Might the CMOS battery already be running low?
I was of the opinion that a CMOS battery running low would make itself be noticed by some other signs, like beeping sounds at boot time or the PC losing it´s accurate time.
None of this is the case.
I was thinking: perhaps I shouldn´t shut down the computer completely but let it be in standby to avoid the boot process.
But this doesn´t seem to be realistic, as I might have to reboot after a kernel update anyway…
… besides: wouldn´t the PC consume more energy this way
Thank you so much to all of you for your kind help.
Many greetings from Rosika 
P.S.:
@JoelA :
I just finished reading the article you kindly provided. Thanks again.
It´s very informative but makes me wonder whether I can do it… .
Their final words are:
Remember, you also need to rearrange your laptop’s or computer’s BIOS settings. You have to enter the date and time after successfully booting up your device.
Hmm, I wonder what that means.
Well, I get the part regarding date and time, but what about “BIOS settings” in general?
Would I have to look through all of the BIOS pages beforehand and take notes?
I changed the UEFI to legacy mode quite a while ago. Would that be reset as well?
Going through BIOS and taking notes is a wise idea if you are concerned ( I would just take pictures with my phone real quick) I’ve had computers in the past that nothing in the BIOS changed & others that went back to default. More than likely yours is still set to the default settings unless you changed them in the past. Like changing it to legacy.
As far as the symptoms- it all depends- the battery will continue to die more completely and you will notice more and more signs.
It’s really easy to change a CMOS battery most of the time.
My opinion- don’t over think it. Be aware of static electricity, but not overly worried. Open the case, pop out the old battery, put new one in. It should be a button battery like CR2032 (or it could be a button battery covered in plastic with two wires going to a connector.)
What computer model do you have? Lenovo-H520e?
https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-a-cmos-battery-and-how-do-you-remove-one/
2 Likes
Hi @JoelA :
thank you so much for the link.
Great idea. I was already picturing myself scribbling notes on a piece of paper. 
So I won´t necessarily need some antistatic device. That´s good to know.
In the article they say:
Before you proceed to handle PC components, get rid of any static discharge you may have in your body. You can do this by simply touching the metal part of your computer’s cabinet
But the cabinet in painted/varnished in black. Would it get rid of static discharge anyway?
Yes, that´s right. I alsready found out it need a “CR2032”. So it´s 3V, right?
The voltage has to be correct, I guess. Seems crucial.
Many thanks and cheers from Rosika
Open your computers case, and have a look, then you’ll be sure.
That’s quite uncommon, I saw such soldered batteries in the late 1990’s, maybe 1999, or early 2000’s.
No, I think you don’t need it.
If you wear a static-charging cloth, such as a synthetic fiber sweater, better get it off before doing the service work 
Anyway, touching a radiator or a tap shortly beofre you reach into the computer - just to be on the safe side- seems to be a good idea.
I only had problem with frequently connected/disconnected cable, with my never or very rarely moved/disconnected USB connection I never-ever had a problem.
Why do you boot always from the USB? It’s not that it should not work -it should- but I don’t really like the idea to have an external drive used like an internal.
That would be a workaround, not a solution
I’ll do some measuring on my desktop regarding the difference in complete shut down vs. standby/sleep. I bet when shutdown, the power it draws will be below 2W, I expect tha standby power to be between 5…7W, but I’ll measure it.
I always shut down my desktop.
According to my experienc there’s a capacitor on the motherboard in paralell to the battery. The CMOS consumes very-very few energy, so this capacitor easily supplies enough power to the CMOS while you change the battery.
When I purposely want the CMOS to “forget” everything -say becaue of a forgotten BIOS password-, then I need to remove the battery for many minutes, like 10…15 minutes.
That’s quicker of course if I find the jumper labelled “clear CMOS”
So if you can change the battery fast enough, chances are, the setup will not be forgotten.
Anyway, walk through the setup screens, and take a photo of them for reference, in case you need to redo the BIOS/UEFI setup.
3 Likes
Thanks so much, László, for adding a wealth of useful information.
I was thinking about that.
But the radiator has paintwork on it, of course. It´s painted in a whitish colour. Wouldn´t that layer of paint act as an insulator then? Or would touchning the radiator still get rid of my bodily static charge
Well, that´s for historical reasons.
The PC came with WIN8 installed (on the internal 500 GB HDD, of course). I didn´t want to get rid of WIN completely back in those days, so I kept it.
I didn´t want to re-partition the internal HDD for dual boot, so I employed that 1 TB HDD for the Linux distro setup.
I never got around to changing this setup situation, as it´s been working well ever since.
… like me.
Thanks for letting me know.
I´ve been doing some more research on getting information about the CMOS battery in the meantime and came across this interesting site:
The question asked was
NOTE I need to know about the CMOS battery. not the laptop’s power supply,
My concern was also to procure some information about the state/health of the CMOS battery via the command line.
The page mentioned two methods, and both worked for me. Here are the results;
1.)
rosika@rosika-Lenovo-H520e ~> cat /proc/driver/rtc | grep batt
batt_status : okay
2.)
rosika@rosika-Lenovo-H520e ~> sensors | grep -i vbat
Vbat: 3.17 V
Wouldn´t the results seem to suggest the CMOS battery is still pretty okay
… in addition to the fact that I haven´t encountered any problems with timekeeping.
Thank you so much, László, for your kind help.
Many greetings from Rosika
3 Likes
Hi Rosika,
Just my opinion.
Of all the suggestions, I think the CMOS battery needing replaced is the most UN-likely.
Why?
Because a PC can be booted without or even with a dead CMOS battery.
The only function of the CMOS battery is to keep the changes a person makes to BIOS which includes date and time. The CMOS battery only uses it’s stored power when the PC is turned off and unplugged.
I found this on the the web;
" Will a computer boot with dead CMOS battery?
Your motherboard and computer will be able to boot just fine even without a CMOS battery present. The only issue is all your BIOS settings will be reset and the time and date will be inaccurate. You will also be unable to save BIOS settings.Nov 2, 2022"
And you may want to read this posting.
Of course it would not hurt replacing the CMOS battery, but it could be a lot work for you taking the back cover of the laptop off and anything else needed to get to the CMOS battery. And of course, putting it all back together again.
Best Regards,
Howard
4 Likes
Hi Rosika,
I think that above situation is the key to solving this.
What is on your Internal HDD today?
Could you reinstall or clone Linux Lite to the HDD, then make it
the boot disk, and boot from there, with the boot controlled by the grub config in the linux on the internal HDD, and with grub written to the internal HDD.
In other words make booting completely independent of the external usb drive.
Then wait for some time and see if the kernel panic still occurs.
If it does not occur, then the issue was with the usb drive or its connections.
You can solve this without a screwdriver.
Regards
Neville
4 Likes
Do you need Windows anymore? Do you still use Windows? If not, I agree with Neville @nevj.
Install Linux on your internal HDD wiping out Win 8. No dual boot. Your external HDD could be fallback if something went wrong with the install onto the internal HDD. Backup your internal HDD for your primary fallback or at least the EFI partition that points to your external HDD.
Of course as long as a re-boot works with your PC, you do not need to do anything. Just have a plan if the kernel panic gets worse.
Kind Regards,
Howard
4 Likes
That is spot on. @Rosika does not have to do anything urgently. There is time to make a plan, as you advise
2 Likes
Hi again, 
thanks to all of you for your new posts.
@easyt50 :
I think you´re right in your assessment, Howard.
O.K., I´m ashamed to admit I didn´t know that. That´s good to know.
I see. That might explain why my CMOS battery seems to be in rather good shape after all.
Thanks for the link. I´ll look at the information provided there all the same.
Actually not.
I just kept it for the sake of convenience in case I would run into a situation where I need to use a programme which is available for WIN only.
That kind of scenario never materialized however. I even do my tax declaration on Linux Lite with the help of wine/playonlinux.
Well, it´s rather a fresh boot (after powering down the stuck boot process with the on/off switch. But I know what you mean, Howard.
Actually I´d like to keep it that way for a little while longer, circumstances permitting.
@nevj :
Hmm… I wonder. I´ve been using this setup since 2016 without encountering any hiccups (well, until now that is).
I pretty much doubt booting from the external HDD would be the issue here… .
Of course, I may still be wrong.
If everything else fails I may resort to it. Thanks for the suggestion, Neville.
I wrecked my brain trying to remember if any kind of kernel panic happened at any time in the (distant) past.
I seem to recollect that it once happened when trying to boot clonezilla live from a usb stick.
As I said, this was only once in all those years, and it in all probability occured when that shonky usb stick we talked about here was still attached to my system.
That usb-stick turned out to be the culprit; so it was a totally different scenario.
To me it seems the clue to solving the problem would be in finding out the reason why boot works without any kernel panic the second time after it initially failed.
I mean: there´s no time delay between the two actions (except for a few seconds) and I didn´t even touch any cable or peripheral device.
So: what might have changed then?
Well, I guess, that´s impossible to find out, especially in view of the fact that there are no logs available.
Thanks so much to all of you for your help
Many greetings from Rosika
You said it was getting colder. That affects humidity and I keep getting shocks from everything. Maybe it affects the USB port or cable?
As long as it isn’t a daily occurrence, and you have a backup, I’m not too worried.
Keep warm.
2 Likes
Hi @pdecker :
Quite so. That damn winter… 
.
O.K., what you said might of course be a possibility.
Today booting went well again. So I at least try not to worry too much.
Oh dear, That´s easier said than done. 
Thanks a lot for your opinion.
Many greetings from Rosika
Hi Rosika,
The temperature changed. It warmed up slightly.
There would be logs in dmesg but you lose that at the next
boot. The log in messages would be preserved.
What you could do to get dmesg would be to not boot Lite again, boot someting else from a usb stick, and look at the /var/log/dmesg in the Lite root filesystem
Regards
Neville
1 Like
Hi Neville,
Actually this thought had entered my mind as well but I dismissed the idea right away as the temperature had not much time to change, perhaps 2 minutes…
… well, a bit longer last time, as I took some screenshots with my smartphone.
Still: you may be right after all, Neville.
messages seem to empty on my system:
ll /var/log/messages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Okt 31 2022 /var/log/messages
Nothing to be gained by it, I´m afraid.
I see. That´s a thought. Thanks for bringing it up, Neville.
Many greetings from Rosika
1 Like
I think your system must be using systemd logging instead of
running syslogd.
1 Like
Hi Neville,
yes, Linux Lite (being based on Ubuntu) uses systemd.
These are the logs available to me:
ll /var/log | grep -i log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643 Nov 10 16:26 alternatives.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8,0K Okt 28 17:28 alternatives.log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 855 Jan 31 2023 alternatives.log.10.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 715 Jan 16 2023 alternatives.log.11.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 427 Sep 21 18:10 alternatives.log.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 591 Aug 26 16:38 alternatives.log.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 588 Jul 29 16:33 alternatives.log.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 689 Jun 22 15:19 alternatives.log.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 792 Mai 30 16:02 alternatives.log.6.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1018 Apr 21 2023 alternatives.log.7.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1,3K Mär 25 2023 alternatives.log.8.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 749 Feb 24 2023 alternatives.log.9.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 39K Nov 14 13:35 auth.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 274K Nov 12 14:14 auth.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 9,8K Nov 5 14:38 auth.log.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 12K Okt 29 12:43 auth.log.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 16K Okt 22 14:04 auth.log.4.gz
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Jan 17 2023 boot.log
-rw------- 1 root root 11K Jan 17 2023 boot.log.1
-rw------- 1 root root 6,4K Jan 16 2023 boot.log.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Okt 31 2022 bootstrap.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Okt 31 2022 daemon.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36K Nov 12 16:16 dpkg.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 309K Okt 28 17:31 dpkg.log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 48K Jan 31 2023 dpkg.log.10.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 174 Jan 16 2023 dpkg.log.11.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20K Sep 28 15:52 dpkg.log.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9,7K Aug 26 16:41 dpkg.log.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13K Jul 31 16:05 dpkg.log.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14K Jun 22 16:59 dpkg.log.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15K Mai 30 16:02 dpkg.log.6.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9,5K Apr 21 2023 dpkg.log.7.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18K Mär 25 2023 dpkg.log.8.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23K Feb 24 2023 dpkg.log.9.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2,0M Mai 28 14:00 faillog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5,6K Sep 21 18:10 fontconfig.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1,5K Nov 14 13:23 gpu-manager.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 236K Nov 14 13:34 kern.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 1,1M Nov 12 14:14 kern.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 189K Nov 5 14:38 kern.log.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 171K Okt 29 12:43 kern.log.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 153K Okt 22 14:04 kern.log.4.gz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 18M Sep 6 17:26 lastlog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 131 Aug 5 18:05 lite-software.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 600 Jan 31 2023 llupdates.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Okt 31 2022 lpr.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 0 Okt 31 2022 mail.err
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 1,3K Nov 14 13:25 mail.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 2,6K Nov 11 15:56 mail.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 548 Nov 4 15:56 mail.log.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 531 Okt 28 15:56 mail.log.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 280 Okt 21 15:50 mail.log.4.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 767K Nov 14 13:38 syslog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 3,1M Nov 12 14:14 syslog.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 451K Nov 5 14:38 syslog.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 405K Okt 29 12:43 syslog.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 388K Okt 22 14:04 syslog.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 16 2023 ubuntu-advantage.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 1 12:42 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1,7K Jul 14 13:10 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 463 Jun 24 12:47 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 598 Mai 31 14:00 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 775 Apr 28 2023 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 750 Mär 31 2023 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 859 Feb 28 2023 ubuntu-advantage-timer.log.6.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Okt 31 2022 user.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 41K Nov 14 13:25 Xorg.0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 44K Nov 13 18:48 Xorg.0.log.old
Would one of these be an equivalent to messages?
Thanks and cheers from Rosika
Hi @Rosika
The cause of your kernel panic AFAIK is that it cannot mount rootfs.
So I would not expect anything stored…
2 Likes
Thanks, László,
yes, you are right of course. Thanks for making it clear.
Well, I remember now the more or less exact wording of the message:
Kernel panic - not syncinc … no working init found. Try passing init= option to kernel
You can also see it in the screenshot I provided in my post #15.
What about that then?
What may that mean?
I´m a bit lost here.
Many greetings from Rosika
2 Likes