Kernel Panic: unable to mount root filesystem...
 

I am using GRUB bootloader. I can boot into windows fine. But booting into linux gives me the error "kernel panic: unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)

I got LILO to load linux fine but GRUB always gives me this error regardless of the linux OS for this particular computer.

@ Reply
 

Hi there,

Can you please paste the output of grub.conf or grub.cfg file (depends on the OS in use) here. It appears that the grub has got a wrong entry for root partition.

As you said you are able to boot in using LILO can you please paste the out of df -h as well as mount command here.

Sorry, I am not sure where to find this file.
I can run windows 98 from the hard drive and linux OSes from the cds.
For more info:
I have two hard drives(sda and sdb) sda hard drive has two partitions ext2 and fat32.

@ Reply
 

Well it would have been better if you would mentioned the OS you are having trouble with.

grub.cfg and grub.conf files are located in /boot/grub/

Also if you are using CentOS, Fedora or RedHat I think following documentation will help you out: http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/03/2...boot-problems/

right now I am running the computer with puppy live cd because win 98 doesn't see my ext2 partition. I am trying to boot legacy OS from the hard drive.

In puppy, in /mnt/sda2/boot/grub/ I don't see the grub.conf file or the grub.cfg . I see the menu.1st file as well as a lot of stage(fat_stage1_5, stage1, ufs2_stage1_5 etc.) files

Your problem seems to be that you have your Linux on sda2 while Grub tries to boot from sda1. Open the menu.lst file you found with a text editor, search for the entry for your Linux distro and change the root (hd0,0) to root (hd0,1), then save the file and reboot.

I changed it and it still gives the same error message, (0,0)

Please post the contents of that file. Please use code-tags (the #-button on top of the text-field) for that.

How old is this legacy os and what is it? menu.lst has not always been the grub configuration file nor has it always been stored in /boot/grub

Legacy is a spinoff of puppy. I think that I am just going to fill up one of my hard drives with unity and the other with win 98.

Unity is not an OS, but a desktop environment that runs on top of Ubuntu. And if this really is a machine from the Windows 98 era then I doubt that it will run Ubuntu with Unity.
If you still want your issue solved then please post the menu.lst file.

I gave up on grub. Lilo worked perfectly with Debian.