Very Computer

by **Custome** » Fri, 02 Mar 2001 09:19:16

I am trying to compile a new kernel and booting from it gives :

Kernel panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03

How do I get back to boot from other image - Even if I say to boot from
/boot/vmlinuz.old - it gives the same problem.

by **Josef Moeller** » Fri, 02 Mar 2001 16:48:49

> I am trying to compile a new kernel and booting from it gives :

> Kernel panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03

Somehow the kernel is unable to locate your SCSI host-adapter driver.
If you have a modularized kernel, there are several reasons why this
happens:
- you didn't build an "initial ramdisk" (try to figure out how the
kernel can load the SCSI driver off the root disk when it doesn't have a
driver for that disk)
- you didn't call /sbin/lilo after installing the initial ramdisk in
/boot.
- the version of the SCSI driver included in the root disk does not
match the kernel.
You can scroll back with shift-pageup to check if there are any messages
before that panic message which complain about the scsi driver.

Quote:> How do I get back to boot from other image - Even if I say to boot from
> /boot/vmlinuz.old - it gives the same problem.

Tough question. You cannot tell LILO (assuming you use LILO) to boot
from /boot/vmlinuz.old. All you can do is set up boot scenarios with a
given name in /etc/lilo.conf, and boot a given scenario. What you should
have done is to keep the old scenario and add a new one for your new
kernel. LILO will tell you what scenarios it knows of when you type TAB
at the LILO prompt.

If you don't have a working scenario, you can try to find a boot disk
that can boot a minimal linux, e.g. a SuSE CDROM can boot an installed
system, i.e. you boot kernel et al from the CDROM but use the
root-filesystem on the disk. Once you have this rescue system up and
running, you can repair the damage.

--
Josef M?llers (Pinguinpfleger bei FSC)
If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize
-- T. Pratchett