Himem problem on 2.4.31
 

Hey all,

This himem problem is on my desktop computer. I'm running Slackware 10.2 on that, with the 2.4.31 stock kernel. It's got 2GB of memory, 2 SATA drives, and is running on an AMD Athlon 64. Mobo is an ASUS A8N-SLI w/ the nvidia nforce4 chipset.

The stock kernel is configured not to use himem--meaning that it won't recognize anything above 900mb of RAM. With 1100MB locked out of usage, that sucks.

I've tried many times to compile a kernel that will boot with himem (either 4GB or 64GB of RAM support) enabled, but everytime I boot the new kernel, it will hang at 'VFS cannot mount root at [location]' The kernel is otherwise in stock configuration.

Any ideas why this is happening?

I configured lilo to dual boot both kernels, in case the new one doesn't work (standard procedure), so I can still boot into the system under the stock kernel. I just don't have access to the 1.1gb of RAM remaining. I thought about how many different options the kernel has, and it occurred to me that it may be an option that's conflicting with the himem configuration? I'm just totally stumped on this one.

I have the append='mem=2048M' line in lilo.conf as well, and the file has the required two lines for each image, including:

# himem kernel
image=/boot/vmlinuz
root=/dev/sdb2

If at all possible, I'd prefer to stay with Slackware--I've gotten used to it and appreciate the UNIX-style interface.

Any suggestions appreciated ......

It's unlikely to be a conflict with himem.

The trouble is, it says 'VFS cannot mount root' but it doesn't indicate WHY. Is it the wrong device? Is the fs compiled in? Could be a number of things.

The first things to check are to make sure that you compile in support for your SATA chipset (and SCSI obviously) and also whatever filesystem you're using on your root fs (that's an easy(ish) one to forget, been there :o).

As an aside, I'd recommend grub over lilo, although your problem is almost certainly not boot manager related. But still, grub is far more flexible than lilo.