kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount fs

[Lucien S Carroll <ucarrl01@umail.ucsb.edu>]

This may well be an easy question, but i can't find anything on it. What
does this error mean? kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount fs

I've a blue G3 running OS 8.6. Whether I boot via bootx or yaboot, i get
this same error message right after it checks the partitions and scans for
RAID stuff. Then it does the boot in 180s deal.

This may or may not be related, but i'm also having trouble getting yaboot
to work. I currently have it set up the YDL way, with the kernel, yaboot,
and yaboot.conf sitting in the system folder of a MacOS installation. With
the line

image = hd:8,\\vmlinux

in yaboot.conf, yaboot says it can't find the image, but if i type

hd:8,\\vmlinux

at the boot prompt, it goes fine. (until it hits the kernel
panic.) for now i'm fine with typing it all in, but i find it curious.
 --
Lucien S Carroll
ucarrl01@umail.ucsb.edu