I have attempted to install kernel 2.6.34 and 2.6.33 kernels with this Debian howto http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_com...on_debian_etch
Everything worked without any errors until I went to boot into the new kernel. When I receive this kernel panic output
Kernel panic - not syncing VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

It also spits out something about being unable to access ext2 FS. I googled this symptom and have seen that it is fairly common, but everyone's error seems somewhat unrelated. I used the same kernel configuration as the one that is currently working, to keep things simple. And here is what my menu.list looks like:

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.34
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.34 root=/dev/sda9 ro quiet

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.34 (single-user mode)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.34 root=/dev/sda9 ro single

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 root=/dev/sda9 ro quiet
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64


I can't see anything obvious here,
thanks in advance for any help....
addux

Hi,
key difference : your old kernel (2.6.26) is using an initrd image, which means that it loads a primitive userspace and then proceeds to load modules required for your hardware. You have no such thing on 2.6.34, thus you need to have the FS/storage controller drivers compiled directly into the kernel (marked with a (*) in menuconfig). Knowing this, its up to you to know which controller you have and which driver it uses, as well as which FS you use. (But still don't hesitate to ask)
Another option is to make an initrd image for the new kernel (which you might have, if you used the dpkg part; so all you need to do is add the relevant line to grub.conf. I never used the makedpkg option)

Serafean

I suppose I should have mentioned this as well...I have tried to configure the kernel multiple times and one time I did try and configure all of the filesystems support as built-in modules and I received the same error. I am really at a loss
maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying here
thanks
addux

Ok then, check that you have the driver for your storage controller built-in. if its SATA, you usually need to also compile in SCSI-disk as well as the correct driver. A mistake I did quite often was to confuse the two storage architectures : if your disk is IDE, and you compiled in the IDE drivers, then your disk wouldn't be sda, but hda. A simple way to check whether you have the correct storage driver (and which one) built-in is to look for a line listing all avalable partitions on the disk it detected (should come just before your VFS error).