Andrewski Posted July 13, 2004 Report Share Posted July 13, 2004 I compiled a kernel as best I could for my laptop (see my other recent post) but it's not working. It loads about a screenful of data and then concludes (right about where it wants to mount the root filesystem, AFAICT) with the following: VFS: Cannot open root device "hda5" or unknown-block(0,0) Please append a correct "root=" boot option Now that sounds to me like I forgot to add the "root=" option to the kernel line in my grub configuration. (That may be intuitive to some, but not me!) Here's what I have therein: /boot/grub/menu.lst: kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-2.6.3-15mdk root=/dev/hda5 I took the root= part from Mandrake's auto-setup; that's one of the options it has for the vmlinuz kernel image. Can anyone offer any pointers at this point? Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac_dispatcher Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-2.6.3-15mdk root=/dev/hda5 That is where your problem is. From what I think that line tells your computer: your kernel is found on your first drive first partition (hd0,0) in the root ( / ) directory. and your root directory in on /dev/hda5. Usuially the kernel and initrd are located in the /boot directory. I use grub on my Gentoo box. Here is my grub config: title Gentoo 2004.X root (hd0,1) kernel (hd0,1)/boot/kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r8 root=/dev/hda2 init=/linuxrc vga=0x31a gentoo=nodevfs video=vesa:ywrap,mttr splash=silent hdc=ide-cd psmouse.proto=imps initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd-2.6.7-gentoo-r8 My Gentoo Distro is on 1 partition only (hda2). So my kernel is also on hda2 in the /boot directory. In grub that is: kernel (hd0,1)/boot/kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-r8 or: hda1 = (hd0,0) hda2 = (hd0,1) hda3 = (hd0,2) hda4 = (hd0,3) So From what I read if your Mandy distro is on hda5 you grub should look like this: kernel (hd0,4)/boot/kernel-2.6.3-15mdk root=/dev/hda5 Give it a try Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewski Posted July 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 Yes, but I have a boot partition in front of my root one; they're separate. So, IIRC, /boot is indeed (hd0,0) and / is hda5. In fact, I copied both from my working Mandrake kernel. Thus the problem.... I did have one thought: /boot is ext2 and / ext3: do I need either/both of those built-in to the kernel, or can I load them modularly? ("Modularly? :unsure: ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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