Kernel panic

Mow · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 106

I just finished installing Gentoo on my AMD64 ASUS k8v mobo using 2 SATA drives hooked up to the via controller in the following configuration:

/dev/hde -- Windows XP
/dev/hdg --Gentoo

When I reboot Gentoo begins with the splashimage like it's supposed to and I am presented with a menu to choose either Gentoo (default) or XP ... booting into XP works fine. But when I choose Gentoo this is what happens:

It begins fine and starts to boot the kernel. It begins to auto-detect my hardware. Getting this far tells me I have the correct drivers in my kernel for booting the system.

However when it tries to boot my root partition I get this error:

VFS: Cannot open root device "hdg3" or unknown-block (0,0)
please append a correct "root="boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mout root fs on unknown-block (0,0)

now my hdg drive is in this config:

/dev/hdg1 -- boot
/dev/hdg2 -- swap
/dev/hdg3 -- root

Here is my grub.conf:

title=Gentoo
root (hd1,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.3 root=/dev/hdg3

I've gone through and reloaded and my partitions are set to ext3 and are set that in fstab.

I've gone through everything I can think off but am at a loss ... I'm itching to get this 64-bit bad boy up so I can play UT 2004

Anyone got any ideas? I think I have all my options set correctly I'm just missing something simple.

Athas · Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 8:28 pm Post subject:

Are you sure your kernel supports SATA? Judging from the error message, it appears that it is unable to find the harddrive at all.
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DaftDog · Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 11:12 pm Post subject:

Hey.. different mobo and stuff but same problem with SATA here... even after 6 weeks of researching and trying around. Seems like it's not too rare an error to occur, why don't you post the specs of your PC, maybe there's a correlation somewhere (I once found a post somewhere that mentioned a problem with Seagate drives and Sata e.g.).
Here's the specs of my PC:

cyrillic · Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2004 12:38 am Post subject:

In the 2.6 kernel, SATA controllers are in the SCSI section. Once you enable the correct options, your harddrives will be detected as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.

Mow · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 106

ahhhh then I bet that is my problem ..... I need to change my bootloader to point to sdb3 for my root partition ..... The drives are getting detected otherwise I don't think I would have gotten this far .... See I figured it was something simple.

Mow · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 106

For those that helped me and so that I maybe can help someone else .... I finally got to try the suggestions on here and that did the trick. My drives were on /dev/sdb.

Once I changed my grub.conf and my fstab all was groovy ..... and fast!

kezzla · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 2:50 am Post subject:

lol omfg !!! I shoulda posted earlier...I'm reinstalling now but I was getting that exact error...I have the Aopen AK86-L motherboard. Anyhow during my previous install, I could fdisk and configure /dev/hde as my only sata drive. (it is also the only hard drive in the box) Thus, I configured my fstab AND grub to be /dev/hdeX bla bla...but upon boot kept getting that error, can't find root...etc

This would indicate I do not need the official via "sata" drivers in the kernel, as the regular VIA82Cxxx whatever covers my chipset which also has a sata controller in it. I will post again with my findings...as I am still reinstalling atm...

If I run into problems I will definitely give the via sata drivers a shot and try the /dev/sdX thing, but I don't think they are **required**.