Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 80:3b
Hello:
I recently installed Debian 1.3.1 that I purchased from Linux System
Labs. I have had several problems, and cannot seem to find the
answers.
I installed the system by booting from a floppy and installing the
base system from cdrom. (My cdrom is bootable; the cd is bootable,
but for some reason, booting from cd just hangs... but that's not too
important).
During the "first part" of the installation --- that is, the essential
system setup, just before rebooting and heading into dselect --- I
opted to make my hard drive bootable. But, I get the following
message:
Currently it is impossible to boot from the second harddisk.
Please boot the system using the rescue boot method and configure LILO
manually.
Indeed I did as the message told me, booted with the rescue disk, went
through dselect, setting up my system, etc. I configured LILO by
hand. Since I ran Slacware 3.4 successfully for about a year, I
simply dropped in lilo.conf from my old setup, and ran lilo. No
errors.
However, when I booted, the system was about half-way through booting,
and just after where it prints "Partition check" I got the following
error:
VFS: Cannot open root device 80:3b
Kernel panici: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 80:3b
I understand the numbers mean major:minor device specs --- since I'm
going off of /dev/sda3, shouldn't the numbers be 8:3?
I toured www.DejaNews.com for help, and tried the following things,
all to no avail:
1. Installed a new kernel --- several times! I used the
*exact* same kernel configuration file as I did for Slackware. I
checked, re-checked, and triple checked the SCSI options to make sure
they were okay.
2. Ran "rdev <kernel file> /dev/sda3" on my kernels: both the
one Debian installed, and the one I custom installed.
3. Also, some folks from dejanews said it could be a problem
booting past the 2mb mark. Well, when I setup the partitions long
ago, I took this into account, and /dev/sda1 is about a gig minus 50
megs to make room for /dev/sda2, my 50 meg Linux swap partition, and
/dev/sda3 is where linux actually runs off of, and it's just under a
gig. Plus Slackware ran on this exact same setup for over a year,
with no problems.
4. Even so, I could still use the rescue disk and do a "rescue
root=/dev/sda3"
In my extreme frustration, I started all over, from the beginning, and
now everything is apparently fine. However, after the "first step," I
still got the "...impossible to boot from the second harddisk..."
message, again forcing me to do lilo.conf by hand.
AND, when I booted to run dselect, from the rescue disk, Linux got
half-way through the boot and said "Unable to open an initial console"
and just froze! I hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE and repeated booting from the
rescue disk, and everything was fine. I installed, configured lilo,
and so far I have no real problems.
My concern, though, is what caused these errors, and are they likely
to show up again? Is my system stable? I never had any errors with
Slackware... <grin>
Here is a quick rundown of important system info:
I nuked a Slackware 3.4 install that was on my 1gb /dev/sda3 partition
for Debian. I have Win95 on a 1gb /dev/sda1 partition, a 50mb
/dev/sda2 partition, and an ext2 2gb /dev/sda4 partition I use just
for storage (e.g. ftp's home).
I have an Adaptec 2940uw card and a 4 gig Seagate scsi drive
attached. This is a 98mb ram P-II system, with an IDE cd rom on
/dev/hdc.
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