Hello everyone.

A machine with SuSE 8.2 crashed then failed to reboot due to a kernel error.
I have tried to fsck through a recovery session and SuSE repair install tool failed due to "no valid root partition".

I think I need to reinstall the system partition (hda3) without touching the other data partitions. Can anyone point me in the right direction?


The exact error is: Kernel panic: VFS : Unable to mount root fs on 03:03


Thanks.

I was in an similar situation last week.

If you do not know exactly what was damaged, then try the following things:

1. Boot from CD (Suse Rescue CD, Knoppix, ...) and do a backup of your data partitions (just in case, something goes wrong)

2. Use the Suse Rescue CD and try to run fsck (again, I already had fsck fixing the problem in the second run). If you had success, mount the patition and safe your config files.

3. Reinstall. Use the manual install in yast and then change the partitioning. give your data partitions the mountpoints they should have and make sure there are no "F"s (for format) in their lines. Mark the damaged partition for formatting.
The rest is as normal.
If done right its painless and (for me) it was faster than trying to repair anything.

Kathrin

You need to reflect the correct root partition in your lilo.conf file or grub.conf file.

If it cant mount the root partition cause the superblock is bad or inconsistent with the data on the drive a re-install and reformat may be your only hope.

minus the possibility of fsck repairing the drive.

I have tried to fsck /dev/hda3 ( the linux boot partition) which replies:

"Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/hda3
Could this be a zero length partition?"

Will try manul reinstall of damaged partition.......

Thanks again folks.