hey, im on slack 9.1, and the slack 9.1 2.4.22 kernel works fine. However ive attempted to compile my own kernel serveral times, modifying the slack 2.4.22 and a fresh 2.6.1 kernel both I have the same problem:

VFS: Cannont open root device "hde5" or unknown-block (0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

and on the 2.4.22 i made from slack i get same error but instead of unknown-block(0,0) i get 21:05

i am using a Maxtor DimaondMax Plus 80GB HD, Maxtor Ultra ATA/133 PCI Card
now before you ask :
yes i have enabled the proper fs support (ext2) and no its not a module
and i have enabled ATA/IDE/EIDE and what not proper support for my HD
and ive tried to get help from ppl on irc kernelnewbies and went through a lot but did not find the problem so here I am.
and ive also compared the slack kern that works with my modfiied one that does not and went through and cant find anything that would cause my hd to not work/detected to my knowledge anyways but of course there is something wrong that i am not finding myself
and about initrd, my slack kern does not use initrd cause tehres no initrd in my /boot so i should not have to use that for mine to get this to work

i noticed when i booted the working slack kern it loads my cdrom takes a second then loads my cd-rw takes a second then loads my harddive takes a second
but with my kern
it loads the cdrom and cdrw taking two seconds then instantly starts loading everything else so its preety clear that its not detecting or something my harddive

with the slack kern i get:
hde: MAXTOR 6L080L4, ATA DISK drive
with my kern it seems to skip that second where it should find/load it.

anyone got any ideas cause im out of em?
any help would be greated appericatly, hopefully this isnt too long and ppl will be discouraged from bothering to read it
(this is also my first time customizing my own kernel)

maybe i should post my .config? tell me if i should if anyone thinks it would help or something
i guess i should post my grub menu.lst as well:
default 0
timeout 20
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Slack 9.1 (2.4.22) (Slack kern)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hde5 vga=0x318 hdb=ide-scsi

title Slack 9.1 (2.4.22-lynx) (lynx's kern)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-lynx ro root=/dev/hde5 hdb=ide-scsi

title devfs
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-lynx-dev ro root=/dev/hde5 hdb=ide-scsi

title Slack 9.1 (2.6.1) (lynx's 2.6.1 kern)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.1 ro root=/dev/hde5

Hope someone might have some hints on how to resolve this issue!

I spent the last few nights determining why a newly compiled 2.6.1 kernel would fail on mounting the ROOT device.

Im running Mandrake 9.2 for AMD64.. Mainboard is MSI K8T Neo (onboard Promise SATA and VIA SATA) harddrive is on the VIA SATA.

The original installation detected the hard drive as a SCSI device (/dev/sda). I compiled the 2.6.1 kernel without problems...

here is a sniplet of the bootup of kernel 2.6.1:
*************************************************************************
.
.
.
Redhat nash version 3.4.13-mdk startup
loading lib_ata.ko module
loading sata_via.ko module
loading sd_mod.ko module
loading ide_disk.ko module
hde: max request size: 128KiB
hde: 40121728 sectors (122942Mb) w/7936KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63
hde: hde1 hde2 hde3 hde4 < hde5 hde6 hde7 hde8 hde9 hde10 >
loading jbd.ko module
loading ext3.ko module
Mounting /proc filesystem
Creating root device
Mounting root filesystem
mount: error 6 mounting ext3 flags defaults
well, retrying without the options flag
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
well, retrying read-only without any flag
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
Re-mounting devfs at correct place if necessary
Freeing unused kernel memory: 424k freed
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel
***************************************************************************


this is what dmesg reports from bootup of kernel 2.4.22-27mdk:
************************************************************************
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
libata version 0.75 loaded.
sata_promise version 0.83
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xFFFFFF0000290200 ctl 0xFFFFFF0000290238 bmdma 0x0
irq 10
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xFFFFFF0000290280 ctl 0xFFFFFF00002902B8 bmdma 0x0
irq 10
ata1: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
ata1: thread exiting
ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
ata2: thread exiting
scsi0 : sata_promise
scsi1 : sata_promise
sata_via version 0.11
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xD800 ctl 0xD402 bmdma 0xC800 irq 10
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xD000 ctl 0xCC02 bmdma 0xC808 irq 10
ata3: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:7c6b 83:7b09 84:4003 85:7c69 86:3a01 87:4003 88:407f
ata3: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 240121728 sectors
ata3: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0xD007
ata4: thread exiting
scsi2 : sata_via
scsi3 : sata_via
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6Y120M0 Rev: 0.75
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 240121728 512-byte hdwr sectors (122942 MB)
Partition check:
/dev/scsi/host2/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p3 p4 < p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 p10 >
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
************************************************************************

As one can see, there is a big difference in how the sata_via module
detects the drive

in fstab, all mount points refer to /dev/sda partitions... and in lilo.conf, boot=/dev/sda and root=/dev/sda3... I know these are wrong if the 2.6.1 kernel sees /dev/hde... but just changing these values does not correct the problem...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

IEdirtbiker

ok i have finally gotten it to work yay
do no one bother pondering on it anymore
im unsure as to what excatly chagne i made to get it to work as i have made serveral changes then tried a new kernel, but right now im just about to play the elmination game to find just that out

So you have no idea what you did? Did you edit lilo.conf? Recompile with a different configuration? If you can, follow up on this a little since plenty of people would have tried to help you out in due time.

hmm well it could have been a number of things
i added a lot more vendor chipset support under ata/ide, although i think i hade the right one before i just added all of them in to see if this was the problem
i didnt know about having to do make mrproper when you compile another kern
couple other things i did too cant really remeber em all..