Re: emergency shutdown?

[ajlewis2@intac.com]

In linux.debian.user, you wrote:
> 
> Okay, so the potato rescue disk seems to kick in alright, at the boot
> prompt I type 'rescue root=/dev/hda1'.
> I get a whole string messages as it locates some things and fails to
> find others - seems alright to me - but ends with the line 'Kernel
> panic: VFS: Unable to mount root on fs 03:01' at which point nothing
> more happens!

I assume that /dev/hda1 is really your root partition and that your kernel
is there.  If you aren't sure, try 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' after booting just
into rescue mode from the disk without the 'root=/dev/hda1' appended.  You
can look it over to see that it is the correct partition.  

I would try booting just into rescue and running 'e2fsck /dev/hda1'  You
might have to use another superblock if that fails:

'e2fsck -b 8193' or for filesystems with 2k blocksizes, 16384; and for 4k
blocksizes, 32768.

I haven't been following this; so I apologize if I'm off base here.

Anita