Trouble after installing

Krogen · Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 10:07 pm Post subject: Trouble after installing

Hey everyone.

Yes, I'm a newbie with little Linux experience.

Here it goes. I installed Gentoo_64 on my triple boot system. I have a working Windows Xp Home installation, Knoppix HD/Debian and... Gentoo. After I finished installing (I think) and rebooted I get the following error message:

"Block device /dev/sda4 is not a valid root device...
The root block device is unspecified or not detected. Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell"

If I "Shell" I get the following error message:

"/bin/ash: can't access tty; job central turned off"

Yes, I have a SATA drive (full specs: look all the way down). I installed Linux with the Stage 3 (the tarball and everything else I got from the web - newest releases). I have 4 partitions. sda1, with windows, sda2, with knoppix, sda3, 512 MB swap, and finally, sda4 with Gentoo.

My grub looks like this:

(Windows Here and Debian/Knoppix)

title Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/KernelName-r7 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda4 udev
initrd /boot/InitrdName-r7

Yes, I used genkernel.

Need to know anything else? Any guesses? Thanks!

*EDIT* Woops, forgot my PC specs.
AMD ATHLON 64 3200 ClawHammer
Albatron K8X800 PRO 2 motherboard
120GB SATA HD by Seagate
NVIDIA 6800 by Gigabyte
1GB DDRAM 3200

Krogen · Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 11:32 pm Post subject:

Bump?

Here are the contents of my fstab.

# <fs> <mountpoint> <type> <opts> <dump/pass>

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto 0 0
/dev/sda4 /boot ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2
/dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0

# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!
none /proc proc defaults 0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).

# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
# use almost no memory if not populated with files)
# Adding the following line to /etc/fstab should take care of this:

none /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0

Anything wrong?

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 12:36 am Post subject:

Hi.

Looking at your /etc/fstab file, the obvious question is where is your / filesystem???
If you look carefully, you've put your /boot filesystem and the swap partition, but forgot to put your / filesystem. What partition are you using for / ? Or are you using /boot on the same partition as / ?

Krogen · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 1:37 am Post subject:

:so confused:

What is a filesystem?

I have windows on sda1. Debian on sda2 (with Grub). 512 MB of swap space is on sda3. sda4 includes gentoo. Where should the filesystem be at?

Thanks for the reply. Hope the above created this problem (easily fixable?).

Krogen · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:33 am Post subject:

OK. I added (No I don't know what I just did)

/dev/sda4 / ext3 noatime 0 1

to my fstab. Rebooted. Same thing. Any guesses?

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 6:06 am Post subject:

Krogen · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 11:37 am Post subject:

Thanks again.

Just like this:?
/dev/sda4 /boot ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2
/dev/sda4 / ext3 noatime 0 1
/dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0

I didn't install Grub through Gentoo. My Grub came with Debian, when I was installing it. Didn't want to overwrite it so I just left it, rebooted, and added the following.

title Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/KernelName-r7 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_boot=/dev/sda4 udev
initrd /boot/InitrdName-r7

Right now I have the below (and I'm getting the same error, btw).

title Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/KernelName-r7 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_boot=/dev/sda4 doscsi nodevfs
initrd /boot/InitrdName-r7

(as suggested by some other people).

I also tried enabling hardware sata into kernel by going into the "genkernel --menuconfig all" , selecting the driver (not 100% sure if I did select the right one - VIA SATA support) and rebuilding the kernel. (http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_SATA)

adaptr · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 11:46 am Post subject:

Krogen · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 9:19 pm Post subject:

No, he said to comment it out.
Comment it out? I'm foreign, now I know what that phrase means, lol.

You should - Gentoo's GRUB is bound to be newer.
What version is it? .95? That's what I have. Would it be any different after upgrading?

Nonononono.
The option is called real_root.
That's what is causing the error.

Was writing it from a sheet of paper. Spelled it wrong. (yes.... root and boot are two different things, heh).

Thanks for the reply. Now... Anyone else? I'll try to comment it out (delete... right?). I'll see if it's any different.