Sorry for the late response...
I think this may be due to incompatible libraries... What GlibC do you have? With 2.3.2 the compilation goes great (although that may mean to also upgrade GCC to 3.2.3)

I compiled a 2.6.1 kernel and everything was hunky dory until, at bootup, I get this message:

Mounting root file system
mount: error 19 mounting ext3 (which is compiled into the kernel!)
pivotroot: pivot_root (/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed 2
umount /initrd/proc failed 2
Kernel Panic!!! No init found! Try passing an init= option to kernel

As far as I could tell, hardware checkup went well, but when the time came to start the OS itself, there's this panic... I can't even find out what it means. Anybody help me?

Oh, and above the text quoted, VFS did mount root as ext2, whatever that means... does all this spell newbie?

velska

Do not warry. This is an easy one. Just do the following:

Open your /boot/grub/grub.conf as root and change root=LABEL=/ in the folloing line:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.1 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi

to your root location. For me it looks like this line:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.1 ro root=/dev/hdd2 hdc=ide-scsi

It will work.

maxut

How did you manage to upgrade the kernel for Fedora without any problems? Did you install the module-init-tools? If yes, where did you get it from? I did the compilation several times manually and using an RPM but system does not detect my ide cdrom (It says cdrom is not a valid block device) and all USB devices including mouse and printer.

linx win, you don't have any problems when upgrading the kernel in Fedora, in fact Fedora Yarrow already comes with the necesary utils, all you have to do is clone your modules.conf into modprobe.conf (both under /etc), e voilà.

About the VFS error, make sure you have at least support for ext2 compiled into the kernel and not as module, if you are using ext3 as your / fs, otherwise compile the fstype directly into the kernel!! (only needed for 2.6 as far as I can tell)

I use reiser and had the problem until I compiled reiserfs support directly into the kernel. Good luck!

Thetargos

Thanks for help. But, what do you mean by cloning modules.conf into modprobe.conf?

Do you mean converting the old modules.conf to modprobe.conf as follows?

./generate-modprobe.conf /etc/modprobe.conf

I got this line from the module-init-tools readme file. I do not know if it is even correct because I do not see any link to the modules.conf. Any way I did it and the system did not tell me it is wrong.

I do not have any VFS problem. I can see all my windows partitions. My problem is with my USB , CDrom (Pioneer DVD-RW) and also sound. I am using ext3 as my /fs but I discovered from the .config file ext3 was compiled as module not in the kernel. I will recompile.

Thanks again

Yes. My USB mouse is working now. Thank you very much Thetargos. But my CDrom and sound still not working although I have enabled the CDrome and alsa in the configuration. Do you have any suggestion?

You can either generate the file (modprobe.conf) by that command (which I did not) or simply copy/paste its contents, its virtually the same.

Regarding the VFS "problem", as long as you have ext2 fs compiled into the kernel you will be able to mount ext3 partitions in kernel mode, remember that ext3 is ext2 with journaling, with the advantage that it can be accessed (without journal) by any ext2 reading driver.

What does it seem to be the problem with your CDRW?

And regarding ALSA sound you should install the official release (depending on your sound card) from their site. I don't quite remember right now what is the ALSA version merged into the kernel code. It is very important for ALSA sound that you get the at least the sources for the driver (despite those in the kernel) to generate the devices (run ./snddevices from the root directory of the source tree of the drivers), another program that you may find quite useful is the alsamixer (which lets unmute and let unmuted the sound channels) again from the ALSA project's main page.

I replaced the LABEL=/ in grub.conf with a direct pointer to the root partition (/dev/hda3) and now my root filesystem mounted (ext3 filesystem mounted with ordered data etc).

But... now I get this error.

This seems to be fun here - every time I make a correction I get a new error message... I don't even know what "initial console" is. Back to the old drawing board.

I ask questions here, but it doesn't mean I don't do anything else - I learn quite a bit while googling and reading plenty readme files.

Did you configure the Kernel with initial ramdisk support? if not check that (it'll give you the famous initrd-<kernel version>.img file in your /boot partition.

Good news!

I changed the root=LABEL=/ to root=/dev/my_root_partition and it works!! I had the wrong partition referenced previously.

I even get udma5 on my hard drive, more than doubling the disk transaction speed! It's been a problem, since I have an asus A7N8X-X mainboard with nforce2 chipset. That only gave me udma2 on 2.4 kernel. Oh, and the onboard nic registers alright and reports itself in working condition. The onboard sound does not work, however... I need to study that.

I id not configure ramdisk support into the kernel, since the online help said it's no longer necessary. Initrd is still loaded into memory in the beginning - I'm not quite clear on how that works, but when I type dmesg I find lines telling me so.

What I don't get is my isdn card working - now redhat-config-network crashes when I try to set up a device for my card and I can't even try to activate teh card. Go figure. I'll have to see if I need to update something for that.

Thetargos

Every time I try to mount mu DVD-RW I get the following massage:

[root@localhost linux]# mount -t auto /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

My cdrom is hdc. So, I tried it:

[root@localhost linux]# mount -t auto /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom
mount: /dev/hdc is not a valid block device

Here is the first few lines of my /etc/modprobe.conf.dist file

# default modutils aliases
alias binfmt-204 binfmt_aout
alias binfmt-263 binfmt_aout
alias binfmt-264 binfmt_aout
alias binfmt-267 binfmt_aout
alias binfmt-387 binfmt_aout
alias binfmt-332 iBCS
alias binfmt--310 binfmt_java
alias block-major-1 rd
alias block-major-2 floppy
alias block-major-3 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-7 loop
alias block-major-8 sd_mod
alias block-major-9 md
alias block-major-11 sr_mod
alias block-major-13 xd
alias block-major-15 cdu31a
alias block-major-16 gscd
alias block-major-17 optcd
alias block-major-18 sjcd
alias block-major-20 mcdx
alias block-major-22 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-23 mcd
alias block-major-24 sonycd535
alias block-major-25 sbpcd
alias block-major-26 sbpcd
alias block-major-27 sbpcd
alias block-major-29 aztcd
alias block-major-32 cm206
alias block-major-33 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-34 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-37 ide-tape
alias block-major-44 ftl
alias block-major-46 pcd
alias block-major-47 pf
alias block-major-56 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-57 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-58 lvm-mod
alias block-major-88 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-89 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-90 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-91 ide-probe-mod
alias block-major-93 nftl
alias block-major-97 pg
alias block-major-113 viocd

I appreciate your help.

Here is my grub.conf file also:

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.0)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.0 ro root=/dev/hdd2 hdc=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.6.0.img
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img

and my fstab file:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/c: auto rw 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/d: auto rw 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/e: auto rw 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/f: auto rw 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /mnt/g: auto rw 0 0
/dev/hdb7 /mnt/h: auto rw 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

Problem solved. I found the solution by trial and error. I just deleted the hdc=ide-scsi from my grub file and it did work fine. I came to this idea after knowing that kernel 2.6.0 does not need the scsi emulation to write to the cd. My DVD rom is mounting correctly.

Wow, good you solved it yourself! And I was just about to tell you that (and that usually any USB device (block device) is detected as a SCSI disk)