I just got done reinstalling rh 8 and it would not boot. Errors are:

VFS: Cannot open root device "" or 08:02
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic:VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:02

I'm a newbie and I have no idea what it means but I know that if kernel is in panic i messed smth real bad . Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

It can't find your root partition, etc. You can try to boot using your Redhat cd and boot into rescue mode off of it to edit your boot loader accordingly.

Also, in the future, try not to mark your threads as urgent or "asap", it might be urgent to you but not to members who come here to help others in their own free time. Thanks.

Sorry about that, I will try that .. it seems though that the partitions were right when I did the install. Is there any way to check that with rescue mode??

Sure, when you boot up in rescue mode, you'll want to either check your grub.conf file if your using grub to boot from and or lilo.conf file if your using lilo to boot from.

Ok I am using grub, when I looked at the .conf file it had the partition number messed up, after changing it to the right one though it still panics and says it needs "init=" for the kernel line. My kernel line is something like that:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.*** ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=scsi

Do i need to add something??

Can you post your whole grub.conf file here for viewing?

That's exactly how it looks it loads the splashimage now so 5 is the correct partition ... thx a lot for your help trickykid


# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda6
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=20
splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1




Oh and smth else during install it asked me if the grub was to be saved in the same partition or in the MBR and I told it the MBR that shouldnt make a difference though...

I think i know what im missing .. there needs to be a link to stage1 with init but do u know the exact syntax for that??

I think it would be just a simple init=<value-inserted-here> but unsure if that would work. I'm not the greatest in using grub but from what I'm skimming thru from google.com searches, it appears most of the time changing and verifying the root partition fixes the issue. Are you sure or for certain that is correct in your setup?

yes hd0 partition 5 is where i installed the linux, i have 2 other partititions and they are both vfat, I verified that with "root"