I just compiled my own kernel, and now when I go to boot I get something like I was getting this last time I compiled my kernel, and decided to retry. I made extra-sure to be careful when it came to the filesystem this time while going through the compile, and I double checked that everything was correct.. The filesystem is ext3 (went in mandrake control center>partitions and double checked.. it is ext3 unless something's really weird) so why would it even attempt to mount a different file system at all?

Thanks for any information

went into my fstab and deleted
not sure if that is the 'real' way to fix this problem, but it doesn't give me a problem on boot.. should I keep it this way? I made a backup to fstab.old so I wouldn't kill anything too bad..

Well, my fstab reads:

none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

There's a difference in mode, if that makes any difference
looking at the line, al other lines in ftsab link a physical location to a logical one, like /dev/hda1 to /boot and so forth.
My limited experience in this makes me guess that fstab is mounting nothing on /dev/pts

My advice is try it for a week without the entry. If nothing melts or corrupts in that time, I'd leave it at that.

Im honestly thinking that it's because your support for the FS in the kernel is a Module. I made that mistake when recompiling the 2.4.22-10mdk because everything for filesystem support in the kernel is a module which is fucking stupid. Go back, and check if ext3 is a module.... if it is, make it built into the system.

I have to agree, making everything under the filesystem menu a module is pretty bad. I went back and triple checked and I had ext3 checked.

It's been a few days and nothing's gone wrong yet, so I'm guessing the fstab edit is good to go. Thanks.