I'm running Slackware 10.0 on a Compaq 733MHz with 128 Meg. It is one of the machines that have USB everything except for the video. There are no other ports. Slackware installed fine and was working great with the 2.4.26 kernel. But since I'm trying to learn as much as I can, I decided to try my hand at building a new kernel. Everything seemed to go fine. When I reboot, I get some kernel panic errors and it freezes up.

First I got a kernel panic that pointed to not finding a file system on a USB drive. I don't have a USB drive, so I went back into menuconfig and changed that. I also went thru the other menus and used help to determine if I needed that support. I re-did the make and the modules_install.

Now I get:

UDF-fs: No partittion found (1)
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (3,1)

I don't know how to procede. Any suggestions?

F_M

edit: Forgot to mention that I added the 2.6.11.11 kernel to LILO, so I am able to boot with the old kernel, just not the new.

Okay, UDF is a file system used on CDROMs and DVDs. I doubt that it is a filesystem that you would want compiled into the kernel as your base file system. The UDF filesystem is under File Systems --> CDROM/DVD Filesystems --> UDF Filesystem support in `make menuconfig`. It is not a file system you would probably want to boot from.

What file system are you using on your root partition? What does `dmesg` say about file systems during boot? My bet is that it is ext2. Do you have ext2 support compiled into the kernel? What does `dmesg` say right after you boot?

If he's running slack 10 then it's more likely to be reiserfs or ext3.
Use menuconfig again and make sure to compile support for ext3 and reiser into your kernel, NOT AS MODULES!

Yes, I'm using reisers. I assume you don't want the entire output of dmesg. The part concerning the filesystem is:

reiserfs: found format "3.6" with standard journal
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device ide0(3,1)) ...
for (ide0(3,1))
ide0(3,1): Using r5 hash to sort names
VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly.

Does this help any?

F_M

Yes, it does because if it is recognising your disk as reiserfs then you must already have those drivers built into the kernel. I would say you're missing something from the kernel build but I can't think exactly what.

Komakino, you were right, of course, on the reiserfs. Guess it's time for me to do another slackware install to knock off a bit of the rust.

Fitz_Monroe, what are the lines from dmesg just prior to the

UDF-fs: No partittion found (1)
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (3,1)

messages you are getting? In your other dmesg excerpt it looked like your root filesystem had been successfully mounted.

The part I posted is from successfully booting up with 2.4.26 and then running dmesg. I'm such a newbie that I didn't know what you were asking for. Is there a way for me to pipe the boot messages into a text file? Right now the lines I'm able to see above the kernel panic are about ALSA and the USB keyboard and mouse. There are a couple network related lines also, but nothing file system related. These are also not error type messages.

F_M

As root, you can look through /var/log/messages to see what was written during your last boot. An easier way, however, would probably be to use cat and grep to find what was written. Try this:

cat /var/log/messages | grep -C 10 panic

That should give you the "Kernel panic" line with ten lines of context. (If you can't find anything in /var/log/messages, look in /var/log/messages.1 or /var/log/messages.2, etc.) That context might yield a clue to what is going on.

Does /etc/lilo.conf show a different root for the 2.6.11.11 kernel than it does for the 2.4.26 kernel? What command did you use to run lilo when you added the new kernel?

I'll dig thru there and see what I can come up with. I don't have access to the workstation right now, so has to wait for me to get on it.

As for lilo.conf, I set it up so that vmlinuz points to 2.6.11.11, then I added an additional section that points to 2.4.26. So, I'm able to boot up into 2.4 fine.

F_M