Viewing Thread:
"Linux boot problem"

Any clues what (if any) config files I can change to fix this...

When I boot linux these days I get kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs blah..blah...
The reason its doing this is because the HD with the linux partition on has become hdb, rather than hda. I've updated various files such as etc/fstab but obviously these are going to be an issue much further along in the boot process, as it is, its dying pretty quickly with that error at boot presently.

Anyway, I hope there is a solution other than a reinstall else I'll be waving bye bye to linux since its really not worth the hassle of reinstalling it.

oh its mandrake linux btw...


-G

Any clues what (if any) config files I can change to fix this...

When I boot linux these days I get kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs blah..blah...
The reason its doing this is because the HD with the linux partition on has become hdb, rather than hda. I've updated various files such as etc/fstab but obviously these are going to be an issue much further along in the boot process, as it is, its dying pretty quickly with that error at boot presently.

Anyway, I hope there is a solution other than a reinstall else I'll be waving bye bye to linux since its really not worth the hassle of reinstalling it.

oh its mandrake linux btw...


-G

Turbonutter would probably the best person to look out for to answer this. He knows a fair bit about linux and he should be able to offer some help.

If you're using lilo to boot, you can boot the kernel image with an option root=/dev/hd to force it to try and mount that partition as /.

For example, if lilo thinks the image is called "Linux", hold down Shift at the LILO: prompt and type:

Linux root=/dev/hdb1

Adjust to taste.

Have fun :)

Thanks but that doesn't appear to be it.
I'd already updated the lilo.conf to take account of the new partition reference, still get the kernel panic. :(

-G

You have to run "lilo" as root for it to update the MBR. Get a GRUB floppy off the Internet somewhere, there's one called "Tom's Root Boot Disk" that's very good. Use that to get it booted (although you'll have to ask Insomnia for instructions on GRUB).

Ah well, took the easy way out and deleted the linux partitions, just not worth the hassle.

Thanks anyway.

-G

Wimp! ;-)

Bleh, my Mandrake "installation" went through about 4 re-installs. None of them lasted more than 10 hours usage time.

Wimp? Hmm...just fed up with dicing with my HDs, if I have to restore the boot sectors on my HDs one more time I'll scream. :)

Btw, this all started a week ago with my trying to install redhat, no matter what I did the install process didn't wanna start, I got iso of the CDs from 2 different sources, I tried boot disks but got no where with it.

So I downloaded mandrake, I initially tried this with 2 HDs plugged in first time I installed it, it skipped the boot disk and bootloader(lilo) steps, 2nd time it installed lilo and then neither HD would boot anymore :)
So I unplugged a HD and reinstalled it, hoping this time i'd have 1 bootable HD if anything went wrong. Install worked fine, for a few hours I had a working linux. :) But then I needed the other HD back, so plugged that in. Linux wouldn't boot anymore, which brought me here. Read numerous HOW-TOs on lilo and created several boot disks, linux still refused to boot. Found a guide on lilo, did exactly as it said, ended up with an unbootable HD again. :)
At which point I deleted the partitions and decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

And you know the really annoying thing? In a few days I'll be trying to install it again. :)

-G

Hm.. I should time myself installing debian from scratch.

132