Re: Kernel Panic: VFS Unable to mount root fs on 21:04
On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 02:17:20PM -0400, Stan Brown wrote:
> I'm trying to set up a new machine this weekend, and i'm in trouble.
I know you needed a solution by Monday, so this is a bit late, but I
haven't seen anyone else post an explanation of what the error
actually means, so...
> Now, I have a problem. The machine will no longer boot from the hard disk.
> I get the message from the subject line. I can boot it from the boot
> floppy.
lilo (or something else) is telling the kernel to mount / from device
21:04 and the kernel doesn't know how to do that. According to
Documentation/devices.txt in my kernel source tree, major device 21
is the generic SCSI subsystem and minor device 04 in that system is
the fifth device, so 21:04 would be /dev/sg4 (or /dev/sge). Either
a) you don't have generic SCSI support in your kernel, b) you don't
have five generic SCSI devices, or c) you have to boot off a SCSI
drive (/dev/sd*), not a generic SCSI device (/dev/sg*).
Although a) and b) are both possible, I suspect that c) is also true,
so your machine will continue to fail to boot until you tell it to
use a device of the correct type.
> During the install of the 2.4 kernel package. I goot a message about
> needing to add a initrd line to lilo.conf.
That's really only necessary if you use the stock kernel or roll your
own and have certain things built as modules; I know filesystem
drivers fall into this category, but can't say what else does. I
don't use modules much, so I haven't had to deal with initrd.
--
When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
have already won. - reverius
Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Mr. Slippery
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