Ok, I'm running Fedora Core 3 (2.6.9-1.667) and when GRUB goes to boot it, I get the following:

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev dm-0
mount: error 22 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

I've not done anything to my system. It crashed last night and when I tried rebooting, that's what happened.

Is my hard drive dead, or is it something else?

Thanks.

Yes. ext3 file system has some problems when the system crashes and the filesystem is not unmounted properly. I had this problem in Fedora Core 1 when the computer crashed. The only thing I could do was to "rescue" using the installation CD.

With reiserfs as my filesystem now, I never have any problems of that kind even when the system is rebooted without shutting down.

Thanks for that . So my disk isn't actually broken then?

Most likely there's no physical problem with the drive (if that's what you mean). You can try the rescue by using the Install disk as I mentioned.

Will do! Thanks again .

Rescuing isn't working. It just goes "Loading vmlinuz....." and my IDE activity led is staying on, but nothing more happens. It's been like that for at least 10 minutes now .

Probably there's something wrong with the Install Disk. Does this message come up when you try to boot using the CD?

If so, you can try using another bootable CD and see if it works. If it does not, then the problem lies elsewhere.

Yep, it happens with the CD (Fedora Core 3, disk 1). Will any Fedora CD do?

Yes. Try with any other boot CD than the one you used. Another Fedora CD will be fine.

This is really annoying, none of my other Fedora CDs seem to be bootable. I changed my boot sequence to put the CD drive first, but GRUB just loads instead.

Did you look in the BIOS to make sure that the CD is booted first?

Is it booting off a WIndows Install CD if you have one? You can isolate it as a hardware or a software problem only by trying different CDs.

Otherwise it might be a hardware problem.

Yeah, it boots from my Windows XP CD and from Fedora Core 3, disk 1 (but not the other disks).

encountered (almost) identical problem today. had a heckuva time installing RHEL from a PXE server to this box (two Intel dual-core Xeons), so went to CentOS 4.4 (Final) DVD. installed w/o incident to the sole disk (WDC 200GB IDE drive). rebooted, finished the install, then shut it down.

then i hooked up an OmniStor (read "nStor") to its LSI dual-channel SCSI controller and got the messages,

"...
VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev dm-0
mount: error 22 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!"

aftermath: powered it down, disconnected the SCSI cables, rebooted, and system booted (after the BIOS Bug/FADT error msgs) OK. hooked up the SCSI cables from the powered-on OmniStor box and it didn't crash - or even seem to notice it.

oh, well...onward and upward




best,
jeff

I upgraded to Fedora 11 yesterday & I get the same error "VFS: can't find ext3 filesystem on dev dm-0"

But I only get it when I enable the onboard Intel VGA to get dual monitors running.

When I disable the onboard & run only my nVidia PCIe x16 graphics card, it boots fine. The same goes when I disable my nVidia card on run onboard only.

I didn't have this problem on Fedora 10.

Strange!