Hey folks,

I installed Slackware 11. Upon downloading the latest stable kernel (2.6.18), I configured it to add ReiserFS into the kernel (not as a module). All other options are rather conservative to try and ensure a boot.

I did the standard "make; make modules_install; make install".

Rebooting, I get

VFS: Cannot open root device "303" or unknown-block (3,3)
Please append correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not sycing: VFS: Cannot open root device "303" or unknown-block (3,3)

"root=/dev/hda3" , the partition where the system resides.

Now I'm not sure what to do here. I've built 2.6 kernels before for slackware 10.2, and have not had a problem. I have also added support for ext2 and ext3, just to shotgun debug. Most other options are the default, except I added smp support for 2 processors, set the processor type to P4, and added the hyperthreading module. This matches my processor.

So I would like to track down this problem, but I need to know where to start looking. There has to be a better way than to build kernels at random until something hopefully boots. So any assistance is much appreciated.

I found a bit on the subject. Aparently I need to create an initrd. I'm going to do a bit more research on this and get back to you all about how it went down.

Here is the link, the section I'm refering to is about half way down titled "Creating an initrd":

http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...kernelbuilding

Cheers!

Tuxrules said this. And he is right. I still had the
kernel panic after configuring eveything needed as built-in.

So I checked the config for my IDE controller on the 2.4.33.3
and selected the same options on the 2.6.18 - problem solved.

Good Luck

-W

I had the same problem. I had failed to check that I was compiling support for my IDE chipset into the kernel. I had just got complacent I guess. Without the IDE support the kernel could not work the hard disk.

During Make Menuconfig check under ATA/ATAPI?MFM/RLL support

Make sure you have selected support for your particular chipset.

mokele:

I havn't checked out that link of yours yet, but yeah, I reconfigured my kernel and lilo (an error on my part invalidated my slack_old option so they pointed to the same thing), and rebooted for the heck of it. I expected it to fail, but it booted! I credit shotgun debugging. I selected a few generic IDE modules this time around, and something along those lines must have done it.

I still have a few errors that show up while booting, and they scroll by too damn fast to read, and they don't show up in the boot log. I'm working on that though.

But thanks for the responses folks.