AMD64, SATA root/boot, kernel panic [solved]

[janpla]

Hmm, I'm not quite whether I dare post here - last time the only answer was from some snotty whelp who thought it was 'cool' to put down somebody for being inexperienced (with portage). Anyway, here goes...

First the HW: it's an Acer Aspire with and AMD64 CPU, a 160GB SATA disk and 2GB of RAM.

I can boot up from the install CD if I give the kernel options 'noapic pci=noacpi noload=sata_nv', and I can see the disk as /dev/sde, which is odd, since the SATA controller is supposed to be some nVidia chip. I followed the instructions to the comma (and it should be noted that I have done this several times before, with Gentoo and other Linuxes as well as a number of other UNIXes).

I used 'genkernel --menuconfig --udev all' (as well as a number of other variants on the theme) to create and install a kernel, configured grub and rebooted. This is what I get:

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(1,0)

The (only) harddisk has 3 partitions: /dev/sde1 (/boot, ext2), /dev/sde2 (swap) and /dev/sde3 (/, reiserfs)

So, where do I go from here?

[MickKi]

I'm not the best person to give advice on your setup because I have no nvidia experience and have never used genkernel - hopefully someone else with nvidia knowledge will add something more pertinent to my post.

I believe that your drive is seen as /dev/sde because it is read as a scsi device at the end of your usb chain? I cannot explain the 'unknown block (1,0). Perhaps your CD/DVD is seen as (0,0)?

It may be worth passing the doscsi option to the kernel and see if it boots, otherwise my preferred root would be to read any articles on the intricacies of setting up nvidia chipsets and manually compiling the kernel with the correct drivers built-in (not as modules) to pick up the chipset controller and SATA drive.

Happy to check for general errors if you post your grub.conf, # mount or # df -h, /etc/fstab.
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Regards,
Mick

[janpla]

Thanks for your reply - it got me thinking again about what I had done. The problem with the panic was because I had an 'initrc' where I should have had an 'initrd'; no wonder it didn't like it, but I would have thought grub would pick it up when I tried to do a setup.

The next problem - which I have solved - was that after the kernel booted, the harddisk was nowhere to be found, the reason being that, firstly, I had told it not to load sata_nv, and secondly, I needed udev. Fortunately it turns out that although the sata_nv that comes with the installation disk doesn't load (or doesn't finish loading), the one that you build with the new kernel will load. The udev problem was solved very simply by using genkernel --udev.

So, now I am up and running, just have to sort out how to get it to recognise the fancy memory card reader - it works when I boot from the installation CD, which is why the harddisk was /dev/sde, but at present my harddisk boots up as /dev/sda. Not a big problem, since I don't have fancy memory thingies anyway.

[jmbsvicetto]

janpla,

if your problem is solved, please add [solved] to the title of the thread (edit first topic).
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Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

[MickKi]

You may want to check the Gentoo USB Guide but without say a CF memory card you may not be able to check that it works.
_________________
Regards,
Mick