Re: FUBARed my install, wont boot :(

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Jamie Kerwick wrote:

> I'll start by saying I'm new to debian, so please be gentle ;)
>
> After 5 or 6 attempts I finally managed to get Debian installed properly
> with a small range of packages.
> I then installed a whole host of packages thru dselect. One of which was
> ALSA (I thought it might help my sound problems, ie, lack-of).
> As a dependancy this seems to have installed a kernel image binary
> (kernel-image-2.4.16-686) during the installation it gave a message
> about modifying LILO, (I unfortunately skipped through this part and
> missed the warning message.
>
> Now when I rebooted my PC it wont boot and just gives a 'Kernel panic
> unable to mount root FS'.
>
> I have tried using my install CD to boot using the 'rescue' however I
> can't get it to work, I have tried 'rescue root=/dev/hda1', and
> 'rescbf24 root=/dev/hda1', but it is still unable to mount the root fs.
> I have even tried to pass a initrd parameter, but with no joy (I'm not
> sure as to what the path to a RAMDISK image should be?)
>
> How do I go about fixing this so I can boot
>
>
>  

Do you have a Linux LiveCD, such as Knoppix or Mepis? If so, you can 
boot off that and repair the damage. If not, you can boot off your 
install CD just like you're going to do an install, only shell out 
Alt-F2 after mounting your root partition and repair the damage (your 
root should now be under /target, so you can "chroot /target" to make 
your root the "active" root system).

I suspect you need to add the line
 initrd=/initrd.img
to /etc/lilo.conf and rerun lilo. (I would think you could get in by 
feeding the initrd parameter to the bootup process, but you may need to 
get in first to figure out what parameter syntax to use.)

--
Kent