[Solved :D] Cannot mount root filesystem (sata)..

jurrie · Last edited by jurrie on Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:50 pm; edited 2 times in total

I changed my motherboard today (K8T800 -> Nforce4), but now I cannot get my root filesystem to mount.

When I boot a livecd, it uses the sata_nv module. My kernel has sata_nv in it (also tried module) and of course SATA support. I disabled the IDE sata thingy, in the ATA menu in the kernel.

Still, when booting, it says my sdb2 does not exist. I tried sda, sdc, etc, of course without any luck. In the quick flash of the kernel I only see it detect my only IDE drive and my cdrom, not any of my three sata discs. The livecd does recognise all three discs.

I tried a clean kernel, using the /proc/config.gz from the livecd, but still won't work.

Any suggestions/ideas?

TIA.

(edit)
I didn't mention I don't use udev, nor have I ever used it. So my bootline in grub is just a simple "kernel /boot/kernelName root=/dev/sdb2"

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

sure you don't need nvidia-sata?

CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL=y

sata driver under "SCSI low-level drivers"
Code:

<*> Serial ATA (SATA) support
....
<*> NVIDIA SATA support

jurrie · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 8:43 pm Post subject:

Yes, that's what I have selected. I assume the NVIDIA SATA entry supplies the sata_nv module. It's also the module I see when I do an lsmod on the livecd (2005.1)

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

what says ?
lspci

jurrie · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 8:49 pm Post subject:

0000:00::07.0 IDE Interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)

and again with a ::08.0

seeing this makes me think I need to select the "ancient" IDE SATA option, in the ATA menu.. however, other posts mentioning nForce4 all state that one should not be used anymore.. (edit: tried and did not work)

The board is a K8N4-E, a Socket 754 board with PCI-E..

(edit)
The dmesg of the livecd, if it may be of any help: http://jurrie.net/dmesg

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

reading your post again:

jurrie · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 9:42 pm Post subject:

1. Grub boot menu appears
2. I select my kernel
3. Kernel messages flash on screen, including hda and hdb (IDE drive and DVD drive)
4. Kernel panic, the vfs one where it cannot find root=/dev/sda2 (or sdb2, I disconnected the other 2 sata drives so it should be sda now, like in the live-cd boot).

(trying a genkernel now... really desperate)

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

I suppose grub is on your sata disk?
if so post your grub.conf file

jurrie · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:02 pm Post subject:

I actually posted this before, but okay

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.14-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/sda2

As i said, nothing exciting. hd0,0 is the ext2 partition, tab completion in the boot menu confirms this.

(edit)
okay... now i'm baffled... Tried the genkernel kernel, it loads the sata_nv module, loads various modules, and still it does not find my drive. I entered a shell and did an lsmod. All modules the livecd loads are present, but no disk but my IDE drive in the /dev folder.

What the hell is one to do :( I'll try 2.6.12, which is the kernel my livecd uses...

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

and your /etc/fstab is also ok? (just checking)

jurrie · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:18 pm Post subject:

Well it never even reaches the point it is to check the fstab, so being it correct or not (it is) shouldn't matter at this point..

I did edit my previous post with my new findings, containing info I never expected to see..

compiling 2.6.12 now.

jurrie · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 11:02 pm Post subject:

okay...

2.6.12-gentoo-r10 using genkernel works. I don't know why this one does.. if anyone who reads this has any info on why, please post it. Something must have changed between 2.6.12 and 2.6.14 which causes this. I still not find this problem "solved" so I didn't edit the subject. I'll continue hammering on this problem tomorrow and if I find anything I'll post it here, for others who may stumble upon the same troubles in the future.

jurrie · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 1:51 pm Post subject:

*bump*

There MUST be someone here using 2.6.14 or whatever, using sata on nForce4, right? If you do, please post/upload/pm your .config or any insights you have on the problem. I've read about every sata/nforce/grub topic on the board and even tried a fresh install, but all to no avail. I'm going somewhat crazy here...

(edit)
screw this. im not gonna waste more time on this. Windows here I come.

coscarart · n00b Joined: 04 Jun 2003 Posts: 25

I have the same motherboard but deluxe. I can sort of get it to work on 2.6.12. I'll try and get it to work on 2.6.14 and report back

coscarart · n00b Joined: 04 Jun 2003 Posts: 25

Booting 2.6.14 makes almost everything fail that is built into the motherboard. I think that it is a problem with PCI PNP or something like that. I don't know this stuff really well. Anyways I have another post here where I am trying to figure out why my sound doesn't work in 2.6.14, but it seems looking at my dmesg that almost nothing works. Here it is:

widan · Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:37 am Post subject:

Remove support for mmconfig in the kernel, it's broken on some Asus boards (at least K8N4-E Deluxe, maybe others too):

jurrie · Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:11 am Post subject:

Thanks, widan (and coscarart for testing as well). That solved the problem! I did a fresh install and disabled mmconfig and it booted instantly. Now my network doesn't work, but I probably forgot something, since it was late. I'll look into it tonight or some other day.

(edit)
Okay, got it working. Apparantly it's a PCI-E ethernet thingie and needs either forcedeth or the official yukon driver. Using forcedeth now.

Lejon · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 9

omekeesje · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 1

As I compiled more than 100 kernels on ssl, slackware, suse, debian and gentoo (and some more I don't remember) distributions,
I am not a complete newby.
Now, for the first time in 13 years linux, I am completely baffled by gentoo.
I compiled kernels from almost all available gentoo kernel-packages with even more .config's, but every time I got on booting
the message: kernel panic, cannot mount fs on onknown block etc.
In contrast with almost everybody on the internet, I am sure this is NOT a hardware problem (motherboard, processor etc.)
Iam sure about this, because I compiled a kernel for my debian system on the same machine and harddisk, and that works.
My guess is, that the problem could be the gentoo mkinitrd, as this totally different from gentoo's.
I should like to see a .config file from somebody with a working (bootable) gentoo system with sata, athlon64x2 and asus a8n-2
motherboard. As this problem makes it impossible for me to use gentoo, I will have to abandon gentoo for the time beiing.

widan · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:06 pm Post subject:

Harry Putnam · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2006 Posts: 1

[quote="widan"]