Hi all,
I installed Red Hat 9.A and all worked fine except for the creation of a boot diskette. At the next boot I could see the GRUB screen asking me to choose between DOS boot or Linux boot correctly as I expected. When i choose Linux the init process works until
the following error:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -K block-major-8,errno=2
VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3" or 08:03
Please append a correct "root" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS Unable to mount root fs on 08:03
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried to start in rescue mode and after loading the fasttrack driver the session goes correctly to mount the linux created partitions. I used successfully the command
chroot /mnt/sysimage, but at the next reboot the sound doesn't
change.
Is it a fasttrack-driver loading trouble ?
What can I do to put the fasttrack driver into the kernel ?
I can only boot from a floppy and then use an installation cd !
Thank you !

Are u using scsi drive?

I'm using MAXTOR IDE/ATA 120GB drive !

what's in your /etc/fstab file on the system?

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(sda7 /swap swap defaults 0 0

fdisk -l gives:
/dev/sda1 * 1 1020 8193118+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1021 2430 11325825 f win95 ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 2431 14946 100534770 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 1021 2040 8193118+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 2041 2053 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 2054 2307 2040223+ 82 Linux swap

is there really a ( in your fstab? If so, change it to a /

if not, try changing the top line to read: (just comment out the top line for testing purposes, with #)
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults 1 1

Must be a Promise RAID IDE controller?

I would guess the Fasttrack module is using SCSI emulation which is why the IDE drives are showing up as /dev/sda.

Not sure if you will have to compile the driver into the kernel and/or build a new initrd.

Nezzo !
I tried changing the fstab file but the boot process fails again with
the same message. Nothing changed !

Michaelk!
When i load the Promise Fasttrack driver, on Device driver table ,
I can read :
------------- Promise fastTrack ATA RAID controller ( ft3xx ) -------

This is what i found about the promise cards.

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/s...er/000549.html

Also, what's your lilo.conf have in it?

I found this also:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...se-RAID1-HOWTO

Looks like you have to build a new initrd. I haven't had the need to every build one. Nezzo post should lead in the right direction but you will have to modify for your specific module.

I read the page
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...se-RAID1-HOWTO
but as you can see all the stuff works with a working Linux system.
Like an hw upgrade and before installing the card ....
I'll try to send a mail to Promise company too.

well, after thinking about it, if you can boot with the floppy and access the drive you should have the right Initial RAM Disk (initrd) on that disk.

my guess would be that you just need to edit the lilo.conf file to specify that.

put the correct Initial RAM Disk in the /boot dir on the drive (probably the same one on your floppy) then
edit lilo.conf like so:

look for a section similar to this:
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
label=Linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.2-2.img #this is the line you would add to point to your initrd
read-only
root=/dev/sda3

save lilo.conf

run lilo -v -v and if there are no errors you should be good to go

reboot the system

sorry for may poor knowledge of Linux, but I haven't any lilo.conf
on my mounted disk ( under /mnt/sysimage ) !
Where that file should be on ?
Probably because of my grub booting ?
During the boot sequence I have to choose between DOS or Linux OS in a preliminary mask, infact there is an XP partition too !