Having until recently been using the stock 2.6.8-1-amd64-k8 kernel (without problems), I decided to try and compile a new one myself. Using the package for kernel-source-2.6.10 I compiled a monolithic kernel with (I think) everything essential for boot compiled into the kernel. In this configuration the startup successfully detects the existence of both the SATA controller and IDE controller (and all the disks connected to both correctly) and correctly prints out the partition table for the SATA disk (which includes the root filesystem). However, when it gets to trying to mount the root filesystem it returns the error: Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,5) Block device 8 appears to be "sd" which I think is correct - the SATA controller in question is listed under SCSI devices. sda5 is the root partition. The system is a Gigabyte K8N-Pro motherboard (nForce3 chipset). The IDE controller uses amd74xx and the SATA controller sata_sil. The config file for the kernel is attached. The system is configured BIOS boots (hd0,0) containing GRUB and kernels for a different linux installation. GRUB points at (hd2,0) (sda1) which is /boot for debian-amd64 containing the kernel, initrd etc. sda5 contains the root filesystem, which is ext3. The GRUB invocation is root(hd2,0) kernel /vmlinuz real_root=/dev/sda1 root=/dev/sda5 vga=792 initrd /initrd.img This successfully boots the previous stock kernel (2.6.8-1-amd64-k8). I also attempted to compile the kernel with just about everything as modules, and then create an initrd (mkinitrd with ROOT=probe in /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf). However, this configuration fails to even detect the SATA controller and the above kernel panic line ends with "unknown-block(0,0)" instead. I've run out of ideas on this one. Am I missing anything obvious? Many thanks Gordon Ball
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config
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