Ubuntu Server on Parallels

Written on February 12, 2008 by Katherine W. Prawl

Well, that’s interesting! I installed the Ubuntu 7.10 server on a new Parallels virtual machine, and it went through the whole process just fine. But when I tried to boot it up, I got an error that said, “PANIC: CPU too old for this kernel.” Weird! If it was that horrible, how could it have installed the system? I’m running the latest version of Parallels (3.0 for Mac), too. Something is wrong here, but I don’t know what.

Well, back to the Ubuntu website to download a new copy of the desktop version, and see if I can get that to run. It’s beginning to look like there’s a problem with Parallels or my Mac, though. The WindowsXP vm is working fine, so I can’t imagine what could be causing Ubuntu to fail.

Hmmm. When I start the installation on a new blank vm, Ubuntu installer says something about unable to load the system description tables, or something like that. It flashed off so quickly i didn’t get the exact words. Nope, it still does what it was doing before. The screen size enlarges, with a broken-looking graphic at the top, then it shrinks back down to the initial size. Yep, something wrong alright. I got an error message saying the display had been shut down 6 times in the last minute and “something bad may be happening”. Yeah. Back to step one. This time I’ll start using safe graphics mode, and see if that helps. Nope, same problem.

OK, the startup screen offers an option to check the CD’s integrity, so I’m doing that now. OK, that passed, so there’s no need to download a new copy. Now I’m running the memory test. No problems there. So, I guess the help forums are my next attempt. If anyone has suggestions, of course I’m more than ready to listen. Just hit the comments button and let me know.

Posted in Linux, Operating System, Software, Ubuntu, Virtual Machine

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