Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 48:05

i see this alot, usually when i have an incomplete installation disk and decide aw, what the hey, and type 'vmlinuz' at the boot prompt, it will then tell me to append a boot= option, and if i do, its going to ask me for a driver disk later.. darnit.

today is a new experience for me, i got my first laptop (DELL Latitude LS PIII w/ 20g IBM HD and some other peripherals im not sure about, the RAM is counted in hex and i havent decoded it yet) .. making this whole experience even more challenging .. this thing doesnt even have a floppy drive, let alone a CDROM fortunately it does have a network card, it took me a while to get PXE figured out (er- functional, figuring this stuff out is more of a 15-20 year goal for me) .. actually PXE is wasnt difficult at all, by necessity, its small, therefore simpler .. not like emacs .. peter anvin rocks!

so im that far ..

maybe a better idea would be to copy a functional distro installation disk into the tftpboot directory and go from there, right now im working with pxelinux.0 (from usr/lib/syslinux/) initrd.img and vmlinuz(from RH9 CD 1)

anyone have any suggestions? smart remarks? know a better laptop i shoulda bought? better distro than RH9 for laptop use? (the latter suggestion i may actually consider)

(insert primal scream here)
have fun all
andrew

I am not sure what resources you have available but if you can get to a Barnes and Noble it would be good. There is a book called "Red Hat Linux 9.0 Unleashed" that walks you through the steps of installing off of a Network. I won't go through all the steps listed in the book but it starts on page 62. It doesn't seem to bad other than the fact that you will need access to (at a minimum) a ftp server to load the needed files on. If you don't have that option it may be that you have to get a external floppy for that laptop. I have had several dell laptops and all had that option available. But i am not sure about yours. I don't know how much that helps but at least it can be done if you have the time and patience.

i do have an ftp server at my disposal, and i did get the install going, but after 3 hours and no real progress made (not even a single percent) i aborted it to try to figure out what the problem was .. any ideas? is it possible that local network installations just take 300 hours or more? umm i think maybe the drivers for this ethernet card are a little off or something

I had problems like that at work installing OS's...it went MUCH easier once I bought a cheap external USB cdrom drive You can find some of those pretty cheap. Check the prices at www.pricewatch.com if you're interested in finding one

Sorry I can't help with the other part, as I'm learning Linux myself right now

yeah, what wound up being the trick for me was installing redhat 9 with no packages selected (still 444M!!) then ftping around for all the RPMS i want .. it seems to go much faster (the right speed) outside of the installation environment .. man these packages are a pain though, this and that need this which needs 10 more ..
and why does redhat default include a dictionary database? eww id sure like to uninstall a bunch of it

The dictionary database is probably under a meg, so you get a lot of bang for your buck with it. I'm assuming you mean /usr/dict/words or equivalent.

Good job on getting the install done. I know that it can be a pain. I think I agree with linux-fan64 and an external cd-rom drive would be the ticket. That really surprises me as the last dell laptop I bought came with a slot that you could install either the cd-rom or the floppy drive in. If you wanted you could install the cd-rom and there was an external cable to run the floppy with at the same time. I guess I am getting older and things change much faster than you want them to. I'll tell you what has been frustrating to me is that they have done away with serial ports on laptops. I have to do alot of programming in industrial environments and you have to have a serial port to talk to the industrial controllers. I had to end up getting a pcmcia serial card. Talk about a pain. Oh well, I am sorry to ramble. Again, good job on getting the install done. Now, have fun and enjoy true freedom.

right on, thanks, im starting to understand what being a linux junkie is (work? i am at work, at least it looks enough like work to my co workers.. how can they understand the difference? I even tell them that im not working .. blank stares), ive even managed to quit posting [most of my] stupid questions .. in between research trips around the net so i can figure out what i need to know to recompile my kernel appropriatly

Well, I am a junkie. Fortunately for me, this is my job (system administrator) so I get to play at work. And in order to feed my need I hang out at Barnes and Noble quite often. They are beginning to know me by name. I am always looking for that next book that will take me over the top and I will achieve enlightenment. I am not there yet. Have fun and good luck.