VFS: Cannot open root device

igorigor · n00b Joined: 21 May 2003 Posts: 4

greetings,

i installed gentoo following the online installation outline.
booting fails with the following messages:

ds: no socket drivers loaded!
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8, errno = 2
VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3" or 08:03

the error is the same whether i boot off the harddisk or the grub boot floppy
i can mount the /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 after booting off the cd
the partiitions are
/dev/sda1 ext3
/dev/sda3 reiserfs

TIA

igor :?:

sebest · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 4:15 pm Post subject:

do you have support for the reiserfs and ext3 filesystem in the kernel that you compiled?
_________________
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Seb aka "Mr Est"

igorigor · n00b Joined: 21 May 2003 Posts: 4

i have support for both ext3 and reiserfs built it.
i just rebuild the kernel with vanilla-sources to no avail
one thing I do notice that it fails with cannot open root device "sda3"

i would expect the device to be /dev/sda3
my grub commands are (using floppy)

root (hd0,0) # this sets the boot partition to /dev/sda1
kernel (hd0,0)/bzImage root=/dev/sda3

when i tried to use root="/dev/sda3"
i got "cannot open root device ""/dev/sda3""

i tried "root=/dev/sda3" to "cannot open root device "" "

also tried root=\/dev\/sda3 to "cannot open root device "\/dev\/sda3" "

i wonder if there is a better way to pass /dev/sda3 as root partition to grub

-igor

igorigor · n00b Joined: 21 May 2003 Posts: 4

i've installed lilo, but the end effect is the same:

ds: no socket drivers loaded!
VFS: cannot open root device 08:03

i suspect the kernel is not built correctly, however i did choose reiserfs and ext3 as
shown in the installation guide

this is very odd indeed