Hi all,
(This is both an install report and a help request, so I'm cross-posting on
debian-boot and debian-user.)
I'm trying to install Debian on a late 2008 MacBook Pro.
I had no luck with Debian Etch 4.0r5 (AMD64): the keyboard couln't be set
correctly (it reacted as if the control key was continuously pressed) and
the CD drive was not recognized ("No common CD-ROM drive was detected", said
the installer).
With Debian Lenny RC1 (AMD64), everything was correctly detected. I
formatted the third partition (/dev/sda3) as a LVM physical volume and
volume group. I splitted that volume group into two logical volumes, one
for the root filesystem and one for swap. I had to reboot to sync the MBR
and GPT tables (in rEFIt), and the install process finished without any
problems; LILO installed its boot record on /dev/sda3 without complaining,
and the Linux partition is recognized by rEFIt. However, when I booted the
system, LILO loaded the kernel, but it failed miserably at the very
beginning of the boot process (it's the fifth line it prints):
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
unknown-block(253,1)
I rebooted with the install disk in rescue mode to debug the problem. My
first idea was that the LVM module was not build into the kernel, which
could prevent Linux to access the LVM partition. I was right, so I compiled
a new kernel:
apt-get install linux-source-2.6.26
cat /boot/config-2.6.26-1-amd64 | sed -e
's/CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=m/CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM=y/' > .config
make-kpkg --initrd --revision foo kernel_image
dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.26_foo.deb
The boot process indeed goes a few steps further, but fails again:
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
VFS: Cannot open root device "fd01" or unknown-block(253,1)
Please append correct "root=" boot option; here are the available
partitions:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
unknown-block(253,1)
I then tried to add the ext2, ext3 and cramfs modules in the system, but
with no more luck.
I also tried various configurations for LILO, again with no luck:
- root=/dev/mapper/vg-root (default setup by Debian installer)
- append="root=/dev/mapper/vg-root"
- root=/dev/ram0 append="lvm2root=/dev/mapper/vg-root"
- append="root=/dev/ram0 lvm2root=/dev/mapper/vg-root"
When the "root=/dev/ram0" option is passed to the kernel, I get IIRC the
following error:
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
VFS: Cannot open root device 100 or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append correct "root=" boot option; here are the available
partitions:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
unknown-block(0,0)
and with "root=/dev/mapper/vg-root" I get:
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
VFS: Cannot open root device "mapper/vg-root" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append correct "root=" boot option; here are the available
partitions:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or
unknown-block(0,0)
Any ideas?