I have run into a problem with Mandrake 8.0 Beta (using the 2.4.2 kernel) where it doesn't mount root. I know for a fact it is looking at the right partition (it says can't mount root, hdg1) because grub sees /dev/hdg1, verifies that it is a ext2 partition and even lets me look at the files so I can tell that all the important directories are there. Anyway have any ideas on how I can get around this since the system won't boot?

install lilo

The boot loader has nothing to do with the kernel being able to mount the root partition. It turned out the problem was the kernel image on the cd saw the hard drive as hdg while the kernel it install on the harddisk saw it as hde.... so I was just passing in the wrong parameter.