Just installed Woody but need help with boot...

["Scott (sidewalking)" <sidewalking@webpipe.net>]

Hi all,

I just took the time over last night and all day today to install Debian
3.0 from all 7 discs.  I went through and did the partitioning and base
stuff right, and shut it down and rebooted, so I had LILO right at
first.  I logged back in as root and went through the dselect options
and added tons of stuff, but after stopping there and exiting through
the proper menus, when I shut it down and rebooted, I must have done
something to screw up the MBR, as this is what I got:
__________________________

request_module[block-major-3]: Root fs is not mounted

VFS: Cannot open root device "303" or 03:03

Please append a correct "root=" boot option

Kernel panic: VFS Unable to mount root fs on 03:03
____________________________

the only thing I could get it to do was this message below the others
when I hit "Return" once or twice:

spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7

so I am not sure if that is part of the error or I interrupted it by
pressing Enter.

I kind of "winged" this install, after reading lots of documentation,
but the install options are usually pretty good about telling you what
you should probably answer, so I kind of left things as the default
whenever I didn't understand the question.  There were a couple of
prompts near the end that talked about the MBR or LILO or something and
I was a bad boy and didn't make a boot floppy.

So, does anyone have any input as to how I can:

a)  Get into the system to fix it, if possible, and

b)  Fix it?

I feel that my step will likely be to boot with the first install disc,
but I don't want to mess up al that I have installed on there already,
if possible.  Maybe that is the only way I will learn, though...  :)


So, any thoughts are certainly welcome and appreciated (please)!  :)


Thanks,

Scott (sidewalking)