VFS: Cannot open root device "hda3" or hda3

nirak · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 6

When I boot my machine I receive the following error:
VFS=Cannot open root device "hda3" or hda3
Please append a correct "root"= boot option
Kernel Panic VFS: unable to mount root fs on hda3.

Hda3 has the ext3 FS, the fstab is the standard fstab, and I have two boot options in my grub, one for the genkernel, and another custom one because the genkernel left out my nic, both worked fine. Yesterday I installed the system, I booted initially into the genkernel one for kernel 2.6.3 and then compiled the kernel, and booted into that, both worked without any issue. Today I installed and configured X and Gnome, both worked great, except when I rebooted the system to check if my runlevel booted corrently into gdm, I get the error listed above. I've read a lot of different posts on this, and they mostly all refer to SATA or Raid arrays, while I'm using IDE. Anyone have any suggestions? I've had no luck with OS, but I seem to be addicted to its wonderful system setup in theory, now if i could just use it!

Any help would be greatly appreciated as i'm very frustrated right now. ( This is my third install this week because of a few other problems ) Also any information you would need to know i'd be happy to supply. I have a Asus p4p800 Delux MB, bfg geforce fx 5900 ultra vid card.

Thanks!

buto · Apprentice Joined: 22 Sep 2003 Posts: 155

can you post your grub conf file ?

nbrown · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 5:57 am Post subject:

It doens't seem likely since it booted ok for you before, but the error for me was caused by a missing option in my kernel config. I solved this by stealing a config from a live-cd for kernel 2.6 and then slowly cut back and if anythign broke I added it back in. If that doesn't help, you'd better find someone more knowledgable than me.

-nbrown

PS Did you try all the stuff in the grub sticky?

buto · Apprentice Joined: 22 Sep 2003 Posts: 155

yeah I know, but it ought to be checked anyway... never know...
It's not likely either that it's a kernel options problems, since he hasn't recompiled the kernel since his previous reboot, if I understood correctly. So let's forget about what's likely and let's check facts

nbrown · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:27 pm Post subject:

The comment about it not being likely was about my suggestion, not yours buto. Sorry :oops:

You slipped your comment in before mine.

-nbrown

buto · Apprentice Joined: 22 Sep 2003 Posts: 155

No worry !
we both made unlikely suggestions, but at least we tried

nirak · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 6

I fixed my problem, I realized that the only difference was I plugged in my other drive that has WinXP loaded on it, I don't generally like to partition a drive up I prefer different drives, and generally my master drive is my linux drive, however for some reason I made windows the master, which resulted in my linux drive changing to hdb, so I just edited the fstab and grub.conf accordingly and now it works wonderfully.

Thanks for the responses!

Deathwing00 · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 6:58 pm Post subject:

Duplicate of https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=50703&highlight=vfs+unable+mount+root+hda3