VFS Unable to mount root fs on 00:00
 

Greetings!

I recently installed Redhat 9 on my "new" box. This is my first time running linux on anything. Install went fine, but did not load RAID during original OS load as I did not have a linux driver at that time... The system was working fine, but of course I wanted to be able to use my other hardware...

System specs:

Celery 2GHz
256 MB DDR
WD 20GB HDD **OS IS LOADED ON THIS DISK**
FastTrack 150 SX4 RAID Card w/
3x Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA in RAID 5 config (240GB total)

Array is configured but has not yet been formated.

Anyway... I downloaded the redhat driver for this card from Promise and was able to make and run the instalation disk. Disk ran as advertised, then I rebooted the system per the instructions in the readme. System Kernel Panic'd on boot.

System loads to the OS Selection GUI ok but when I select the OS I get error:

VFS: Cannot open root device "Label=/" or 00:00
Please append correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

From the OS selection GUI I can "edit the commands before booting". There are currently 2 lines available for editing:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi

I am assuming that there is an error in that sequence, but I sure cant tell where.

I DO have access to the command line if needed.

**HELP!!**

The driver that you downloaded is right from redhat?
you can insert Linux Installation CD1,then run "linux rescue" and remove dirvers of this raid card.Reboot and try again.Maybe your system will be fine.

No. The driver was from PROMISE. But I don't think the driver is the problem, or at least not DIRECTLY the problem...

The problem I see is that you are telling grub that your kernel image (vmlinuz) is in the /vmlinuz directory when it is (should be) in the /boot directory.

Try this:

rberry88

Nope. I get a "File Not Found" with that.

Let me ask a little different question...

What does a VALID root= command look like? According to the cryptic error messages the problem should be there...

The change the part in your kernel line where you have:

to


rberry88

ok ran and the system now boots to the desktop.

HOWEVER, in the boot sequence, it says the filesystem is being mounted as readonly.

ALSO, my changes arent being saved, so when I reboot, I have to manually edit the same line... Where do I make the change permanent? ...I assume that the readonly problem has to be resolved first?

The readonly thing is not a problem, that is what the "ro" stands for in your kernel line.

To make the changes stick, you need to edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file once you are booted up.

rberry88

So my filesystem should be read only then? I'll take your word for it. Sounds like I can change that by removing the ro at another time if needed.... Is there any reason why I would want to do this?

System now boots fine. Thanks!

When the kernel first starts, it needs to mount your root partition read-only so it can safely run fsck on the partition. Once it finishes checking the partition, it remounts in read-write mode. No worries.

*note* fsck is like Windows' scandisk (god forbid using a M$ program to describe what a GNU util is). Basically it checks the partition for errors and tries to correct any it finds.