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Re: Grub and linux-source-2.6.12



On Wednesday, 26.10.2005 at 08:58 -0400, Sebastian Canagaratna wrote:

> Hi:
> 
>   I tried to upgrade to kernel 2.6.12 using linux-source-2.6.12. I am
>   using unstable. The compilation goes fine, during which there is a
>   message: Root device is (3,2)
> 
>   I have my root partition in /dev/hda2. In the menu.lst for grub
>   I have:
> 
>   root (hd0,1)
>   kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12 root=/dev/hda2 
> 
> 
>   This is the same for the other kernels I have been using previously:
>   2.4.27-2-686; 2.6.11 etc.
> 
>   Now, however, when I boot up, there is a kernel panic, with the
>   message Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (3,2).
> 
>   I tried:
> 
>   rdev /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12 /dev/hda2
> 
>   and then tried to boot up, but I had the same problem. I do not have
>   an initrd.img; The other two 2.6 kernels I used had an initrd.img, but
>   they were precompiled kernels. Are the new kernels supposed to work
>   only with an initrd.img or am I make some other mistake.

This sounds suspiciously like you have missed out something from your
compiled kernel which means that it cannot boot from your root partition.

As you have pointed, many precompiled kernels use initrd.  Typically,
the initrd will include support for booting your root filesystem such as
disk drivers (SCSI, SATA etc.) and the filesystem support (e.g. ext3).
If you used the precompiled config for your kernel but aren't making an
initrd, then the filesystem and disk driver support will have been built
as *modules* unless you changed this during kernel configuration: this
won't work, since the kernel cannot load modules until the root
filesystem is accessed.

Check that you have your disk support and ext3 (or whatever) compiled
into the kernel, and not built as modules.

(As you might gather from the above text, I was stung by exactly this
problem recently :-)  ... )

Dave.
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