Hello! I am using Arch Linux (love it, sheer opposite of ubuntu) and installed and configured everything today. I built a kernel from vanilla source and installed it in accordance to instructions I found on the Arch Linux wiki. When I went to put it into grub by vim'ing menu.lst, I first just did what the fallback Arch Linux entry did with a different kernel and initcpio image. Well, I booted, and withing a few seconds, the kernel panicked. I examined the menu.lst again, and found that in the normal Arch Linux entry, the initcpio is not specified. I removed the initrd section, and I got about 1/2 second further! Woo! Well, problem HERE was that it couldn't mount my specified root drive. So, I went back and built and reinstalled kernel with support for ext4 (not boot, but worth a shot anyway) and it didn't work. So then, I changed the way I specified the root volume from toWell, here I am, and I booted. Next thing I know, it still can't mount. Why? It claims not to know what filesystem type it is. It said it tried ext3, vfat, msdos, blah, blah, but my /boot is (I'm 99% sure) ext2, and it did not try to load sda1 as ext2.

So, if you got through all that junk I just told you, I need to know how to specify in menu.lst (or other file :3) that my root partition for booting here is a ext2 volume.

Ah, yes, and I'm a grub noob, and a bit new to the whole kernel thing. So go easy on me without watering things down too much. I got through the arch install after all!

The default Arch build has ext2 as a module. Ain't gunna work unless it's in the initrd or built in (not module) in the kernel itself.

Do you have an initrd? If you do make sure you put that after the kernel line.
Here, replace vmlinuz with your kernel and initrd.img with your initrd. Hopefully this should work. Btw, your root partition is /dev/sda1 right? If not, you need to put your root partition there and change the first line,ie. root (hd0,0) accordingly.

@ sHY: That looks like what I have. I tried the initcpio (arch doesn't use initrd or something here - kernel build instructions said initcpio, and it doesn't want to mkinitrd) , it gave me problems for some reason. I don't use one in my normal boot anyhow.

@syg00: I guess I just assumed the kernel had that already - I bothered to look, and -- holy cats, first thing in the filesystem menu, totally unselected. (I've been messing things up today. Did a bit of C++ code and I made some REALLY dumb mistakes...) I selected ext2 everything, non-modularized. I'll install tomorrow and then let you know how it went.

Thanks for your help thus far! I'm watching the "CC"s scroll down my xterm for kernel compilation as I speak.

Okay... So I installed the kernel with ext2 support, and tried booting. Panic! So, I tried again with a initrd specified as the one I made with cpio. Now I get this:
And thereupon the kernel stops syncing and tries to kill init and panics. I don't have a init in /bin, so I tried copying it from /sbin -- no luck

Any help from here?

bump (ugh... triple posting... 3X)