Hi Slack Group:

I must have overlooked something very fundamental in recompiling kernel 3.2.2 to remove PAE and cx8 for my VIA 600Mhz mini-itx home server.

The hard drive upon which Slack 13.37 is installed is an EIDE Western Digital 500 gig. drive. Under Slack 13.37 it had two partitions -- /dev/sda1 (swap) and /dev/sda2 (/).

After upgrade to slackware-current, including kernel 3.2.2, the kernel panics on boot stating something about ide-gd and that I need to put one of the recognized partitions (/dev/hda1 and/or /dev/hda2) into the "root =" option of lilo.conf.

I changed the following in lilo.conf:

boot = /dev/hda
root = /dev/hda2
save and exit
and then /sbin/lilo
reboot

Kernel panics again with the same message upon reboot.

I then did this:

boot = /dev/hda2
root = /dev/hda2
save and exit /etc/lilo.conf
and then /sbin/lilo
reboot

Same kernel panic.

lilo doesn't seem to like the (h)da because it states something about not recognizing those partitions when I do /sbin/lilo while chrooted using the Slack 13.37 install dvd. I didn't give it much attention, thinking it had something to do with being chrooted.

How do I get to a bootable kernel 3.2.2 using either /dev/hda or /dev/sda.

Thanks for your help.

oh for goodness sake, i just realized now after stepping away from it --- i probably need to edit my /etc/fstab.
it probably still has the hard drive partitions stated as /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2.

i'll check this when i get home tonight.

Did you try to boot your system from the Slackware installer on the DVD ?

Anyhow, you can run fdisk or cfdisk from the installer and see which partitions are recognized.

PS I didn't see your second message before posting, there likely is the rub.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks Mr. Spaier, definitely will do.

Changing the entries in /etc/fstab should fix it.

But what this means is that you've left SCSI support out of your kernel. SCSI support is quite important. Even though your hard drive is IDE and you may not have a SCSI controller in your computer, SCSI support under Linux is a lot more flexible than IDE. We know that your system works with a SCSI driver, because your drive was previously recognised as /dev/sda.

At a minimum, I'd build in SCSI disk support, and enable the MULTI_LUN option. It helps with USB sticks, card readers, etc. You may also need to enable SATA support for your chipset.

1 members found this post helpful.

Maybe you had to make an initrd after the kernel upgrade ?

Thank you all for responding.
Issue resolved.
I had SCSI support built into the kernel.

My first problem was that I had ext3 and ext4 items built as modules.
I then compiled them directly into the kernel.

I believe the next problem was in my effort to insure full EIDE support, I built the now "deprecated" ATA support items into the kernel along with the newer libSATA/PATA items.
When I removed the deprecated items, and compiled the others into the kernel, then my hard drive was recognized again as /dev/sda and all good from there.

Thanks again for your guidance; when you're trying stuff and it won't work, it helps alot to have others' keep your attempts at logical deduction on track. :-)

sidenote for yuks and historical reference:

When i built this mini-itx box with 600Mhz VIA cpu and 1 gig. RAM, the linux kernel was likely 1/8 - 1/4 of its current size and able to be compiled/built in approx. 2 hours. Now, in 2012, the same box and specs. requires 9 - 9.5 hours for a kernel build. The downtime associated with 3 build attempts equaling 30 hours and 3 days of no home server access has persuaded other household officials to approve acquisition of newer gear.

Software bloat can have positive side effects :-)