Re: 2.6 compilation woes...

[Doofus <doofus@bulldoghome.com>]

anoop aryal wrote:

> On Wednesday 01 March 2006 05:32 pm, Doofus wrote:
>  
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I hope someone can help me out here.
> > I'm finding 2.6 quite complex compared with the 2.4 kernels which I
> > understood and was comfortable with.
> >
> > I've recently installed sarge over the net and chose kernel 2.6 to
> > initially run with. Everything worked well.
> > I then got the 2.6 source from my debian mirror and did my first
> > compilation (make menuconfig, make-kpkg clean, make-kpkg <revision>
> > kernel_image, dpkg -i ../*.deb), using the default (and working) .config
> > file in /boot as a starting point.
> >
> > This also went went well even though I still don't fully understand
> > every aspect of the source tree.
> >
> > My problem:
> > When I choose the newly compiled kernel from the grub boot menu I get,
> > early in the boot process:
> >
> >    Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)
> >
> >
> > I resolved to do some more compiles, only making changes to the default
> > configuration by one section at a time, in a process-of-elimination
> > effort to find where the problem is, but even after the first
> > compilation when the only change I'd made was the processor type, I
> > still had the same boot failure.
> >
> > So, I cleaned the source tree and compiled another kernel using the
> > completely unmodified .config file that came with the working default
> > 2.6 sarge installaion. And you guessed it - another kernel panic.
> >
> > Now I'm bamboozled. If I compile a kernel using the identical .config
> > file that was used to compile the working and running kernel and it
> > won't boot properly, then my powers of fault finding dry up. I'd be
> > mightily grateful if anyone can give me any ideas as to where the
> > problem may lie, or other things to try.
> >
> >
> > Configuration:
> >
> > Dell Inspiron 8200 P4 laptop
> > hda1    /boot (ext2)
> > hda2    WinXP (ntfs)
> > hda3    FAT32
> > hda5    /home (reiser)
> > hda6    / (reiser)
> > hda7    swap
> >
> >
> > Original working and new unworking sections of menu.lst:
> >
> > title        Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.8-2-686
> > root         (hd0,0)
> > kernel       /vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686 root=/dev/hda6 ro
> > initrd       /initrd.img-2.6.8-2-686
> > savedefault
> > boot
> >
> >
> > title        Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.8
> > root         (hd0,0)
> > kernel       /vmlinuz-2.6.8 root=/dev/hda6 ro
> > savedefault
> > boot
> >
> >
> > Thanks again for any help offered.
> >    
>
> you didn't mention which one was the working stanza and which one was the non 
> working one.
>
> you probably need the modules for riser fs either compiled into the kernel (if 
> you don't want an initrd line like in the second stanza), or, you can have it 
> built as a module but make sure mkinitrd knows to create the initrd with the 
> riserfs module in the initrd.
>
> you may want to copy /etc/modules into /etc/mkinitrd/modules and tweak it so 
> that you only leave in the modules you need to boot with.
Thanks for this.

The working stanza was the first one quoted above. The second one was 
added by kernel-package after compiling the new kernel. I'm having 
trouble seeing past the fact that the .config file I'm compiling against 
is *precisely* the one that the working default kernel was built with, 
and yet the new build doesn't work. I thought the kernel-package would 
take care of the boot environment and menu.lst stanzas automatically, 
including any initrd images, but maybe it's not that simple...

I've never had anything to do with initrd images before and don't 
particularly see any need to do so. After reading your reply I 
recompiled with ext2 and reiserfs compiled permanently into the kernel, 
but I still have the same kernel panic.

I don't know where to go from here. Except maybe back to 2.4     :O(