I am new here, so....Hi all

I do have a question I am hoping anyone can help me with.

For giggles I have very basic install of slackware 8.1 installed on a machine. I want to install all of X and the desktop stuff manually in the hope of learning exactly how it all works. The defualt kernel is a 2.4.18 version, I downloaded the full 2.4.20 kernel source tree to upgrade (I created a new source tree and left the original 2.4.18 in /usr/src/ tree alone).

I compiled the 2.4.20 kernel fine, copied the bzImage to /boot, made my changes to lilo.conf, reinstalled lilo (using /sbin/lilo), and updated the mbr.

Now when I re-boot the machine I have three options;
Linux-2.4.18
Linux-2.4.20
WindowsXP

I boot fine with Linux-2.4.18 and windows XP; but with my new kernel I get an error;
Kernel Panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs 03:41

My lilo.conf for linux; - I can't remember what exactly it says for WindowsXP

image=/boot/vmlinuz
root=/dev/hdb1
label=Linux-2.4.18
read-only
image=/boot/linux-2.4.20
root=/dev/hdb1
lable=Linux-2.4.20
read-only

vmlinuz and linux-2.4.20 are symbolic to the kernel images.

My partition make up is;

hda1 = /boot
hda2 = Windows
hdb1 = /

There are other partitions but I don't think they are invovled with booting (I could be wrong)

I have lilo installed on the / partition and updated the MBR using;

dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
lilo -M /dev/hda /bootsect.lnx

The only thing I can think of that would really cause this problem is whene I copied the bzImage of the new kernel I renamed it at the same time.

I used the following order of steps to compile the new kernel (the 2.4.20 source tree is in root's home dir)

cd /linux-2.4.20
make mrproper
make menuconfig
(configured the kernel at this point)
make dep
make clean
make bzImage
(copied the bzImage to /boot here)
make modules
make modules_install

Any one run into this before?

Thanks for any suggestions,
-aeath

What kind of filesystem are you using for the root partition? And have you compiled support for that filesystem in your kernel?

The easiest way to compile a new kernel would be to copy the .config from the old kernel tree to the new one and then run 'make oldconfig'. That way you get the same configuration that was used for the old kernel source tree.

I have to say I've never seen anyone update lilo like that, what does it mean. Why don't you just type lilo?

I am using ext3 as the the file system for all partitions other than the swap partition.

I might have missed that in the kernel, it would make sense.

Is there a lilo entry that might be needed (linux rootfstype=ext3)?

Again, thanks for the help - it is all coming together, though slowly.

To be completely honest, while trying to install slack the first time, I completely trashed my MBR. Then I tried to repair it using FIXMBR from the WindowsXP recovery console. Unfortunitly that did not repair my mbr, and trashed my partition table at the same time. I had to use fdisk to re-write the partition table. It was a long night, last night.

I was able get into the default kernel (2.4.18) with a boot disk, reinstalled lilo using liloconf and this time I installed it to / instead of the mbr. When I rebooted I got "invalid partition table". I figured if using the dd if=/dev/hdb1 /of...... statement made a bootable file for use with the boot.ini in WindowsXP, why wouldn't it work to repair the mbr. I used lilo -M just to update the mbr with the bootsec.lnx file. Truth be told, I didn't expect it to work, but it did.

I am real good at breaking stuff, just takes me a bit to fix it.

-aeath

Just a suggestion......

You mentioned this is your earlier post:

=====
I used the following order of steps to compile the new kernel (the 2.4.20 source tree is in root's home dir)
=====

Personally i always put the kernels source tree in /usr/src/linux or /usr/src/linux-<kernel-version> , then compile the kernel from that dir.

Also , watch the kernel messages when you are trying to boot the 2.4.20 and make sure it is detecting you hd
correctly or at all.

mesa
Linux = Freedom

Just a quick update in case anyone was wondering.

I followed Mik's advice and used the .config file from the original 2.4.18 kernel only changing the processor type to MK7 and it booted great. Now I'll compare the two .config files to find out where the differences were, just out of curiosity.

mesa;

Good point on keeping the source trees in the same general area, makes sense.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

-aeath