VFS : unable to mount root ??

[Yen-Wei Liu <ywliu@beta.wsl.sinica.edu.tw>]

Hello everyone,

        First of all, I DID browse all the previous mailing list discussion
and didn't find out the solution. So, I decide to join the mailing list
and I apologize if this problem has beed addressed before.

        The problem is : after finishing base installation, I rebooted
from hard disk, then the following messages appeared :

        MINIX-fs : unable to read superblock
        EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
        MSDOS bread failed
        Kernel panic : VFS : unable to mount root

        Apparently Linux failed to mount root file system. OTOH, I could
boot from floppy with the custom boot disk, which was produced after
base installation, and the root file system was mounted successfully as well.

        I wonder if there is anyone having the same experience ?

        I am running a 486DX-33 no-name clone , 32MB RAM, IDE Conner 240MB hard
disk, 3.5" floppy, ET-4000 VGA, 3C503 ; pretty common setup.

        Here is the fdisk result :

device  boot  begin  start  end  blocks  id  system
/dev/hda1       2      2    240   65725  82   Linux Swap
/dev/hda2       241    241  895  180125  83   Linux native

        I formatted /dev/hda2 with mke2fs as the root file system.

        Here is the /etc/fstab :

/dev/hda2       /       ext2    defaults
/dev/hda1       none    swap    sw
/proc           proc    proc    defaluts

        Is there anyone kind enough to give me a hint what's wrong ? I can
solve it myself as long as there is a right direction

Yen-Wei Liu
Computing Centre
Academia Sinica
Taipei, Taiwan