Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs
 

Hello all. I've been searching for a solution, but I can't seem to find a straight answer.

I have built LFS 6.11 on my external USB hard drive. Root is on /dev/sdb3. I installed the grub bootloader onto my usb external hard drive. My machine is a Dell Latitude D610 and yes, it does boot USB Mass Storage device.

When I turn on my computer with the external hard drive, it goes to the GRUB bootloader screen, and I configured it to have LFS 6.11 and Windows listed.

My LFS boot is set like this:

root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/lfskernel-2.6.11-12 root=/dev/sdb3

It boots, but I receive a "Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block 0:0" error. I also saw a cannot open root device "sdb3" Append correct "root=" boot option.

My kernel is 2.6.11 and I have built-in usb mass storage device support, ohci, and ehci--not as modules.

So, in short, I want to be able to boot to LFS whenever I startup my computer with my usb external hard drive on. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

Could you boot it before GRUB? How did you build it? Has a mkinitrd been done on /dev/sdb3?

This is my first LFS install. I just followed what the instructions from the LFS book. And no, I did not do a mkinitrd on /dev/sdb3.

SOLVED

I added a "rootdelay=" option in the kernel line to allow some time for my /dev/sdb partitions to be detected before the actual root mount.

Yay! Now, proceeding to BLFS..