Hello everybody,

Here is my system config.
1 HD partitioned as following

- win2000 pro (16 GB)
- linux swap (256 MB)
- unallocated space (1.5 GB)
- linux partition ext3 (2.8 GB)

and I already had debian up and running very well on the ext3 part.
What I wanted to do is to resize the ext3 part. by allocating the free
space (1.5 GB) to it.
I used the re-distrubuted free space tool in partition magic 8 and it finished
successfully. I rebooted my machine and here is what I got:

LI99999999999999999999999999
999999999999999999999999
999999999999999999999999

no LILO, no menus, nothing. I was shocked cuz I spent alot of time tweaking my linux system till I got it running perfectly.
So I had to boot from the debian(woody) cd and installed LILO once again in the MBR. Now I got the famous LILO menu with winNT,linux and linuxold.
Any choice gives the famous kernel panic :

Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block

my 1st question : did the PM 8 corrupt the ext3 or something of that sort?
my 2nd question : somebody help me plzzzzzzzzz

thanx in advance .

Not being that good myself my advice might be a little weak but meh... when you say any option... does that include Win 2K? Since that would be strange as Lilo should load up 2K and ignore linux when you select that option. Also if you have it you could try Knoppix, use that to get into ext3 and check that all the root directory is still around for debian. If not then put the debain CD's back in and press the button to do a repair tho i dunno which one that is hee... but that might undo things that you have set up I believe... but it would work again hopefully.

I can boot win2k just fine when I choose winNt from the LiLo menu
but the kernel panic comes either when I choose linux
or linuxold.

The kernel panic you see was because the Linux kernel could not read your root filesystem to launch the init program. You said you had the free space BEFORE the Linux partition. If so, is it possible that your Linux partition was /dev/hda4 before and is now /dev/hda3. I don't think Partition Magic should renumber the partitions, but then in my experience free space usually comes at the end of the disk. Check that the root option in /etc/lilo.conf matches what it actually is on the disk (you'll need to boot to your distro's rescue CD and mount the partition by hand.

Another possibility is that PM simply borked the partition. In that case, you might try to boot from the rescue CD and run a fsck on the affected partition. If it's not badly broken (just bad filesystem metadata or something), it's possible that a fsck might fix it.

Good luck!

I am a chinese, maybe you understand what's i say
first change the directory the kernel source, for example:
#cd linux-2.6.6
#make menuconfig
select "Dvice Drivers->ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support->"
you hat to select this "ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support"
#make
#make modules
#make modules_instal
#make install
configure the boot manager
#reboot
Good lucky!
If not succes! please mail to youxia_2008@yahoo.com.cn

Thanx for all of ur replies. I got the problem finally solved.
For some reason when resizing the linux root partition
the PM messed up with the LILO location.........something
of that sort I dont knw exactly.
But what I have done is that I installed a new lilo
(by booting from the CD and choosing to write a new LiLo to
the MBR). and since the new lilo have fresh settings which
doesnt take into account the locations of my kernels.........etc.
so I obviously got a kernelpanic when I tried booting any of them.

which meant that if I can edit the lilo.conf I can get the problem
solved. So I booted from the debian CD and when getting the boot prompt
I typed: rescure root=/dev/hda3
which got me logged into my linux system.Then I opened a console session
and edited /etc/lilo.conf and added the following line initrd=/initrd.img ,saved
the file and lilo and reboot and finito

Congratulation!