I have installed Red Hat 9 and it won't boot up, what I get is:

"kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8, errno =2
VFS: Cannot open root device "sdb5" or 08:15
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:15"

I created a boot disk at installation and that is what I am trying to boot with.

If it is needed to be known, I put the "/" and "swap" partitions on an external usb Maxtor hard drive. Also, when I went to install Red Hat, it only recognized the external drive and it didn't recognize the drive that came with the computer.
I have no problems booting to windows xp, it is just Linux that won't start.

To boot, you need at least the driver for the disk controller where the disk with the root partition is attached. This probably means you need to have the usb-storage module loaded as well as the modules this one depends on.
For this, you must have an initial ramdisk (initrd) on your boot floppy which contains these modules and is loaded during boot.
Alternatively, you can build a kernel with all necessary modules directly compiled in and put that one on the boot floppy.

Regards
ric.

Thanks for the info and I mean no disrepect, but I have no idea how to do what you said or even understand it. If you know of where I can find that information, it would be most helpfull.

A short info about initrd is in http://linuxreviews.org/howtos/Kerne...O/en/x543.html

You just need to create it on your boot floppy.
Of course for this you need a running Linux system; you might try Knoppix.

But in general, your RH9 installer should take care of that and put an initrd on the boot floppy. Were there any such options you might have missed during installation?

Regards
ric.

I'm still getting the errors, but I'm not sure if I did this right. So feel free to smack me upside my head.
What I did was I went to someone who has a working Linux, I opened a terminal(I hope this is the right term for it) and typed "cp /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img /mnt/floppy".

Just in case you need to know, I also opened a terminal and typed "/sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img 2.4.20-8" and it told me that it already existed.

If you are wondering, I made the changes to a copy of the boot disk, so I still have the unaltered bootdisk.

Feel free to let me know what I am doing wrong.

The initrd contains modules required specifically for the machine it runs on. You can't simply copy the initrd image from a completely different machine and expect it to work.

You also need to tell the bootloader where the initrd image is to make it work.


I suggest you re-run the RH9 installer (which I don't know from the inside, sorry - maybe someone else can help out here?) and look for an option like "create initial ramdisk", "make system bootable" or something similar.

Maybe you might simply repeat the whole installation procedure with an open eye about installing special driver modules on your boot floppy. Maybe someone with better knowledge of the RH9 installer can help out here?

Another option (probably the most easy one for the moment, considering you are a Linux newbie) would be getting a cheap internal harddisk and installing at least the root partition ("/") there. If you have a standard IDE controller, there should be no need for a customized initrd at all.

Regards
ric.

Ricstirato- thanks for all the information, I'll have to check out what you said.