Grub and root error!

warlock55 · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 8

I'm having this problem with Gentoo on my laptop (toshiba portege 4010).
I have no boot partition, I use only a single / partition which is formatted with reiserfs. The kernel is already compile with reiserfs (not as a module).

When I boot up, I see this:
VFS: mounted root (ext2 filesystem)
Mounted devfs on /dev
Gentoo initrd startup...
Step1 :.. .
Step 2: .. . ....
....
Step 4: determining root device
Root block device unspecified or not detected
Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell.

then I enter: /dev/hda2 (my root partition)
I get:
Step 4a: mouting root
step 5: finishing up
step 5b: setting up stuff for pivot_root
step 6: pivot_root and exec/chroot real init
umount /tmp/.initrd/dev: device is busy
Usage: init 0123456SsQqAaBbCcUu
VFS: Cannot open root device "hda2" or 03:02
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:02

My fstab has this line:
/dev/hda2 / reiserfs notail 0 0

my grub.conf:
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-version root=/dev/hda2 vga=788
initrd /boot/initrd-version

Is there anything wrong with my setup?
Thanks alot.

nielchiano · Veteran Joined: 11 Nov 2003 Posts: 1287 Location: 50N 3E

you tell that you included the Reiserfs into the kernel (which is good, in your situation).
So I suppose that you compiled your kernel yourself, and not with the gentoo-genkernel-tools?
if you did it yourself, IMHO, the initrd line should not be there.

Also, if you did it yourself, make sure that absolutely everything needed to boot is IN the kernel (that includes of cource reiserfs, but also IDE or SCSI drivers, ...)

warlock55 · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 8

I used the genkernel first but I got the same problem...
I modified the genkernel config file to compile reiserfs into the kernel itself.. still the same problem.

I guess the VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) is ok because I have a server running Gentoo and it also has that message although the root partition is reiserfs..
The server's dmesg:

mnagl · n00b Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 25

i've got the same problem here. it is on a customers server and so it's very annoying. i'm using software-raid an have to type /dev/md2 every time the server boots to get it up.

Pdrie · n00b Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 6

I had the same problem. It was solved when I replaced the following line in Grub

kernel /boot/kernel-version root=/dev/hda2 vga=788

with

kernel /boot/kernel-version root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda2 vga=788

mnagl · n00b Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 25

that replacement has already been made in my case. so i am very astouned why the error ist going on to show up.