Hello All,
This is my first time in the forum, cheers to all!

This is what I am trying to do:
Convert RedHat v3 physical machine to VmWare virtual. I used Altiris to capture the image of the Linux box, then I created a virtual machine, and used the restore option to install the RedHat into the Vm.

Obviously system settings are different, which I believe is causing my problem. The R.H. kernal chooser appears as normal:
Grub Version 0.93
Kernel: Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (2.4.21-27.0.2 Elsmp)
then during the boot process the following error messages appear:

...
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Red Hat nash version 3.5.13 starting
Loading scsi_mod.o module
Loading libata.o module
Loading ata_piix.o module
/lib/ata_piix.o: init_module:
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRW parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
ERROR: /bin/insmod exited abnormally!
Loading jbd.o module
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
Loading ext3.o module
Mounting /proc filesystem
Creating block devices
VFS: Cannot open root device "LABEL=/" or 00:00
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00.


This may have been too much detail, but better too much than too little. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Cheers,
Justin

This looks like the problem to me. It appears that Grub is trying to boot the partition labeled "/", but there isn't any partition on the VM with that label.

You will need to change the boot command (by pressing e to edit the command) to load from the right partition probably change the root command form LABEL=/ to (hd0,0). Then once you have booted in you will need to change your /boot/grub/menu.lst.

This assumes you are using grub 1, if you are using grub 2 it will be a little different.

I made your changes. I get the same information except the VFS line changed to:

VFS: Cannot open root device "(hd0, or 00:00
Please append....

I did type everything correct.

When I edited the menu:
root(hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.21-27.0.2.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/ hda=ide-scsi hdb=ide-scsi apic
initrd /initrd-2.4.21-27.0.2.ELsmp.img

It appears to save the changes then on restart will go back to "default"

yes, when you edit in the grub menu, it only changes it for that session, which is why you will have to change the menu.lst file after a successful boot.

As for the continued problem, try changing "root=LABEL=/" to "root=/" on the kernel line, and if that doesn't work try removing the root= option from the kernel line altogether.

I don't know if either will work, but that seems to be where the problem is coming from.

root=/ will not make it better, you have to give the specific partition to the option, like root=/dev/hda1, of course adapted to your needs.

Yes TobiSGD you are right. root=/ does not work. I tried /dev/hda1 and the result was 03:01. Would you know of how to find the hd label?

Thanks

Boot into the physical machine and have a look at the output ofThe one mounted as / is the partition you have to use for the root-option.

I tried this the partition was /dev/sda6. Resulting in similar errors. At the grub menu, I do have an option to open a command line. Could this be useful? I have also tried different Grubs.

As far as I understand your posts you have done a 1:1 copy of the physical drive to the virtual drive. So that the kernel doesn't find the /-partition can, AFAIK, only have two reasons:
1. The device-descriptor given to the kernel is wrong.
2. The kernel lacks a driver.

Please post the output ofon the physical machine.

to be clear, did you copy the entire hard drive, or just one partition?

I copied the whole drive. I am away for a few days, and will verify this coming week.

This is the output of df:
Filesystem 1K-Blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 34693320 17424760 15506232 53% /
/dev/sda3 101107 26059 69827 28% /boot
/dev/sdb1 76896316 32836 72957280 1% /mnt/disk2
none 254476 0 254476 0% /dev/shm

I noticed there were two hard drives. /mnt/disk2 only has three folders on it: lost+found, PT_Server, PTS_Server. I do not believe it is used (possibly a raid configuration?)
This computer is a Dell Optiplex 370 with Red Hat v3 presumably installed from factory. I am moving to an MDG Prism vx6850i running VmWare Player. (This is running a clean install of Ubuntu fine.) I decided to move both hard drives into the MDG and try booting off of them. I get the same problem as stated above. This eliminates problems with the image. Yes, the image was of the whole hard drive (sda6)