VFS: Unable to mount...

[kolbo <kolbmatt@egr.msu.edu>]

good day eh.

i'll preface this message by saying that i'm relatively new to linux. i've been
running linuxppc4.0 on a powermac 8600/300 for about 4 months. i've been reading
up on debian, and it seems like a really good project (good goals...good
implementation). however, i've been trying to install debianppc on my system for
about a week and a half, and now i'm stumped. 
1.i downloaded the base from http://master.debian.org/~dan/

2.i then extracted it onto its own partion sda6 (/debian) on my running linuxppc
system (*note that the root partition for linuxppc is sda5)

3.next, i retrieved the latest kernel from ftp.linuxppc.org and mv'ed it into my
/debian/boot/ directory (it is named simply 'vmlinux')

4.then, i modified my quik.rc file to look like this:
    timeout=10
    root=/dev/sda6
    image=/boot/vmlinux
    label=linux

5.next...quik -r /debian (*got warning, bootable partition before /dev/sda6)

6.i rebooted the system into macos, and tried using bootvars to boot...i set my
boot dev to scsi-int/sda6...needless to say, it didn't boot (*note that i'm no
openfirware wiz).

7.so, i proceeded to get the recommended RAMDISK. then i tried using BootX.
linux started to boot, but i got a kernel panic:
    (Everything looks normal to here...)
    Partition check:
        sda: sda1 sda2 sda4 sda4 sda5 sda6 sda7
        sda:scsidisk I/O error dev08:10, sector0 unable to read partition table
    RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block0
    VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)
    VFS: Cannot open root device 00:06
    Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:06
    Rebooting in 180 seconds...

unfortunetly, i'm unable to figure out what to do next, any help on the matter
would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance,
matthew kolb

kolbmatt@egr.msu.edu