[2656] in RedHat Linux List
Re: "kernel panic: VFS unable to mount..."
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (brian eric bothwell)
Mon Nov 4 19:49:28 1996
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 19:36:49 -0500 (EST)
From: brian eric bothwell <brbothwe@indiana.edu>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.95.961104100351.5368A-100000@netcom16>
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
On Mon, 4 Nov 1996, Richard Jennison wrote:
>
>
> I have installed 4.0 from a RH cdrom and applied all of the errata
> rpms. (without any known problems). I then recompiled the kernel using the
> latest source kernel-source-2.0.18-6 and modularized everything I could
> except ext2 filesystem. This also went along ok without any error messages.
> I then copied and edited and ran /sbin/lilo as per RH user guide
> instructions. Here is my revised lilo.conf file if relevant:
--------snipped------------
> When I boot with the new kernel it "sees" the IDES but stops
> loading with the line "kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:41"
>
> If I try to load the old kernel then I get the same message but on
> 08:03 instead of 03:41.
>
> What next? Thanks Rick :)
>
>
Well, I was having a similar problem and I fixed it like this:
1) First, check to see which root device your kernel(s) are booting from:
rdev /boot/xmlinuz
which should give you /dev/hda (assuming this is your root partition for
Linux). When I recompiled the 2.0.18 kernel the first time, rdev told me
that I was booting off /dev/sda3 instead of /dev/sda5 (/dev/sda5 is my
root partition). If rdev tells you the wrong partition, you can change
it by using rdev (you will have to read the man page on this one, as I am
not at my Linux box and forget the exact syntax)
2) Next, make sure that the symbolic link /usr/src/linux points to the
correct directory for the kernel version you are using. Since I upgraded
my 3.0.3 Red Hat to kernel 2.0.0 I had a stale link to my old linux-2.0.0
directory that was not changed by the new compile. You can check the
link by "ls -l" and then change it by "rm /usr/src/linux; ln -s
/usr/src/linux-2.0.* /usr/src/linux".
As I am not sure exactly if the stale-link was a problem with the
kernel-panic per-se, but it was causing some g++ compile errors when I was
compiling some C++ code I wrote that had compiled fine under RH 3.0.3/
kernel 2.0.0. If you still get a kernel panic after this, you might need
to recompile the kernel (making sure to "make clean" right after "make
dep" to remove an old files left from the previous compile) to assure
that the kernel-panic is not due to a "bum compile" caused by gcc looking
on the wrong source directory.
Hope this helps, and if anything I said looks incorrect to any of the
gurus out there, please let me know. I am still learning also!
-Brian
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