Joachim Köstler wrote:
Good evening!I have successfully installed woody on a dec alpha xl 266 machine. Kernel version 2.2 seems to work fine.After having upgraded to kernel version 2.4.18 I can no longer boot. After having recognized the scsi host adapter and loaded the correct module (as for kernel version 2.2) the kernel panics because Linux does not seem to be able to mount the root fs (error message: cannot mount root fs). The module for the scsi host adapter is not compiled into the kernel, but I think as there is an initrd things should go all right. I cannot figure out why kernel version 2.2 works fine whereas kernel version 2.4.18 does not although the parameters are the same (root = /dev/sda3; initrd = /initrd).Could anybody help me? Thank you very much Joachim Köstler
Dunno if this applies to you, but I had exactly the same problem on a xl-300 using the built-in SCSI controller. It turned out to be a result of the particular CIA used in my machine (CIA version 1) and some code change that came in around the 2.4.13 kernel and remains there in the 2.4.18 kernel. As far as I know, the 2.4.19 kernel isn't fixed either. For further details, see the thread on this list entitied "A SOLUTION: Booting 2.4.18 kernel w/ sym53c8xx on XLT-300" dated 10 May 2002.
Jay Estabrook helped track this down and has created a patch for it. I have the 2.4.18 kernel working here now on my XL-300. The "fix" I described has been running since May without any noticable problems on my machine. You might check and see which CIA chipset your machine uses, and if it is a version 1 chipset (21171) my solution might work for you. Alternatively, send me an E-mail back channel and I will send you Jay's patch that he developed. You WILL have to re-compile the kernel :(
Cheers, -Don Spoon-