Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.4 panics on init_dev

Issue

• System panics with following message

EIP is at init_dev [kernel] 0x55 (2.4.21-27.0.2.ELsmp/i686)
eax: 00000000 ebx: 00000500 ecx: 00000000 edx: 00000000
esi: 00000000 edi: e898fb00 ebp: c04d7400 esp: c5e8be80
ds: 0068 es: 0068 ss: 0068
Stack: 00000000 00000000 dbf0edc0 00000000 00000000 00000000 e2930280
df997010
      00000000 00595820 f280ee48 3b7e7680 00030002 c5e8a000 00000000
e898fb00
      f0cbc880 c01b1436 00000500 c5e8bee4 f7fdda00 e78b3008 00000000
c017e890
Call Trace: [<c01b1436>] tty_open [kernel] 0x66 (0xc5e8bec4)
[<c017c890>] dput [kernel] 0x30 (0xc5e8bedc)
[<c0172266>] link_path_walk [kernel] 0x656 (0xc5e8bef0)
[<c0163f88>] get_chrfops [kernel] 0x98 (0xc5e8bf00)
[<c013a513>] in_group_p [pkernel] 0x23 (0xc5e8bf08)
[<f88947ca>] ext3_permission [ext3] 0xaa (0xc5e8bf10)
[<c0164241>] chrdev_open [kernel] 0x71 (0xc5e8bf38)
[<c0162490>] dentry_open [kernel] 0x110 (0xc5e8bf54)
[<c0162378>] filp_open [kernel] 0x68 (0xc5e8bf70)
[<c0162783>] sys_open [kernel] 0x53 (0xc5e8bfa8)
Code: 8b 04 88 89 44 24 30 85 c0 0f 84 9c 00 00 00 8b 54 24 30 8b
Kernel panic: Fatal exception