Can't boot into gentoo after install

aje · 04-09-2005, 12:45 PM

I went through a gentoo installation following the manual almost word for word. Upon my first reboot I had some problems with grub but after a little editing I was able to boot the kernel.

although I can now boot the kernel, i always eventually get the error, "Block device /dev/hda3 is not a valid root device. the root device is unspecified or undetected".

I'm not sure what to make of this now ...

I tried to register to post at the gentoo forums but I'm using links from the gentoo live cd and I cannot see the image confirmation that I need to register there.

All help is greatly appreciated.

acid_kewpie · 04-09-2005, 01:29 PM

please show us the output of "fdisk -l" is hda3 really your root filesystem? is it possibly your extended partition?

aje · 04-09-2005, 10:52 PM

fdisk -l /dev/hda reads:

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB 40037760000 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77578 cylinders



/dev/hda1   *   1     63   31720+     83   Linux
/dev/hda2       64    1056  500472    82  Linus swap/solaris
/dev/hda3       1057  20433  9766008   83  Linux
/dev/hda4       20434 59186  19531512  83
 Linux

Sorry if the text doesn't line up very well, It's hard to tell how it will look in an X11 browser.

syg00 · 04-09-2005, 11:09 PM

SATA drive ????.
If so, try using /dev/sda3 - you can edit the line from the grub menu.

Quick and easy test. If it works, fix up grub.conf and fstab.

aje · 04-10-2005, 07:25 PM

It's a regular IDE hard drive.

I'll try this anyways though ...

EDIT: When I try root=/dev/sda3 I get the file not found error.

DaneM · 10-27-2005, 03:34 AM

Has anybody found a solution to this problem? I've recently installed Gentoo, and I get the same error.

Thanks.

--Dane