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Ok I will appoligize now if im not posting in the right area. This issue is regarding BackTrack 2 installation. I am new and I know is based off of slax which im not sure if thats the same thing as slackware. So if this is the right forum here is my issue.

I just tried many times to install BT2 onto an external wd 160GB drive. I have fallowed the guide on the offensive-security site about 4 times and one other guide that I cant find the link for that just had you make one partition and used mke2fs instead of mkfs. Anyway when I boot up all the text starts to roll down the terminal screen and the bottom says this.

"RAMDISK: Couldnt find valid ramdisk image starting at 0."
"VFS: cannot open root device "811" or unknown-block(8,17)"
"Please append a correct "root=" boot option."
"Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,17)"

Other then that everything else looks ok. So whats the problem and how do I fix it?

I also noticed when I tried to do everything in the first guide and try to set the filesystem for /dev/sdb3 it would say that it doesnt exist. Any ideas how to get this all up and running? Incase any of you need to know im only puttin BT2 onto a 5GB partition.

Thank you all for your help and again if the is posted in the wrong area please accept my applogies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy8

Hi,

Slax is based on the Slackware distribution.

Apparently you don't have file system support. The kernel doesn't have the module. You could make a initrd. You should read the /boot/README.initrd file to learn how. Or just do a 'man mkinitrd'.

Did you check the BackTrack 2 install guide?

BTW, I don't use BackTrack, just a shot in the dark.

That is the guide I was fallowing when I did this. I fallowed that guide 3 or 4 times to the "T". Would format matter? like maybe try ext2 instead of ext3?
What would the initrd do for me?
The guide you linked to says to do 3 partitions and one of the other guides I saw just said to do one. Does it really matter?

Im not total n00b. I know with a typical install you should have a /boot, a swap and a / partition on the drive but doing this from a live cd is new to me and Im not at all familiar with errors like this.

Well now that Im home I have the cd booted and I have looked into the /boot and the only thing I see that even mentions initrd is a gzip file call initrd.gz*
Ill see if I can find something through google and see what turns up

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy8

Hi,

The /boot/README.initrd file;

Quote:

Slackware initrd mini HOWTO
by Patrick Volkerding, volkerdi@slackware.com
Sat Sep 3 22:20:13 PDT 2005

This document describes how to create and install an initrd, which may be
required to use the 2.6 kernel. Also see "man mkinitrd".

1. What is an initrd?
2. Why to I need an initrd?
3. How do I build the initrd?
4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?

1. What is an initrd?

Initrd stands for "initial ramdisk". An initial ramdisk is a very small
Linux filesystem that is loaded into RAM and mounted as the kernel boots,
and before the main root filesystem is mounted.

2. Why do I need an initrd?

The usual reason to use an initrd is because you need to load kernel
modules before mounting the root partition. Usually these modules are
required to support the filesystem used by the root partition (ext3,
reiserfs, xfs), or perhaps the controller that the hard drive is attached
to (SCSI, RAID, etc). Essentially, there are so many different options
available in modern Linux kernels that it isn't practical to try to ship
many different kernels to try to cover everyone's needs. It's a lot more
flexible to ship a generic kernel and a set of kernel modules for it. The
generic 2.6 kernel in Slackware supports the ext2 filesystem (which is
used by the initrd), and also supports most IDE controllers (much like the
old bare.i kernel). So, if you have an IDE based system that uses the
ext2 filesystem, then you will not need to use an initrd to boot.
Otherwise, read on.

3. How do I build the initrd?

The easiest way to make the initrd is to use the mkinitrd script included
in Slackware's mkinitrd package. We'll walk through the process of
upgrading to the 2.6.13 Linux kernel using the packages found in
Slackware's testing/packages/linux-2.6.13/ directory.

First, make sure the kernel, kernel modules, and mkinitrd package are
installed (the current version numbers might be a little different, so
this is just an example):

installpkg kernel-generic-2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
installpkg kernel-modules-2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
installpkg mkinitrd-1.0.1-i486-1.tgz

Change into the /boot directory:

cd /boot

Now you'll want to run "mkinitrd". I'm using reiserfs for my root
filesystem, and since it's an IDE system the reiserfs module will be
the only one I need to load:

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.13 -m reiserfs

This should do two things. First, it will create a directory
/boot/initrd-tree containing the initrd's filesystem. Then it will
create an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz) from this tree. If you wanted to,
you could make some additional changes in /boot/initrd-tree/ and
then run mkinitrd again without options to rebuild the image. That's
optional, though, and only advanced users will need to think about that.

Here's another example: Build an initrd image using Linux 2.6.13
kernel modules for a system with an ext3 root partition on /dev/hdb3.
Note that you need both the jbd and ext3 modules to use ext3:

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.13 -m jbd:ext3 -f ext3 -r /dev/hdb3

4. Now that I've built an initrd, how do I use it?

Now that you've got an initrd (/boot/initrd.gz), you'll want to load
it along with the kernel at boot time. If you use LILO for your boot
loader you'll need to edit /etc/lilo.conf and add a line to load the
initrd. Here's an example section of lilo.conf showing how this is
done:

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.13
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
root = /dev/hda6
label = Lnx2613
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

The initrd is loaded by the "initrd = /boot/initrd.gz" line.
Just add the line right below the line for the kernel image you use.
Save the file, and then run LILO again ('lilo' at the command line).
You'll need to run lilo every time you edit lilo.conf or rebuild the
initrd.

Other bootloaders such as syslinux also support the use of an initrd.
See the documentation for those programs for details on using an
initrd with them.

---------

Have fun!

I hope this helps.

Well thank you all for your help. I will keep this stuff in mind incase it happens again. I found out with a lil program called CD Check that I had a bad disk. Well the disk had very slight scratches on it but nothing realy bad so I also ran the program against the original image I downloaded and turns out that it must have been a bad copy. See just on friday I was trying to burn a new CD and I think I used about 10 different programs and a few of them gave me a "Cycle Redundancy Check". Well I decided to do some research on that and found out what it was and came across that little program. So what I ended up doing was downloading a new copy and burned it to a different media (Memorex Black CD-R) and so far all is good. I will have to see if this one actually keeps booting and see what happens.

Again, Thank you all for your help.

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy8

Are you using windoze to burn the iso's ?, I found a few years ago that windoze had a lot of trouble burning iso's created by linux. I used to make lots of coasters until I switch to linux full time.

This may not be the case anymore I haven't used windows to burn cd in a few years, K3b does the job now, just thought it may be worth mentioning.

Same thing happened to me ... Window$ burned tons of Linux CDs badly ... many from Suse, Ubuntu, Mandriva. It finally burned a FC4 DVD correctly and tyranny ended once and for all :D

Hi

Just had a read of this thread, and if I read it correctly, you installed Backtrack2 and then when you booted it could not boot from your external hard drive.

Just a guess, this external drive is USB and your motherboard bios combination cannot boot from USB.

If this is the case you will have to create a boot floppy or cd to let initrd.gz find your usb device and allow it to boot.

I am however confused as to why you would want to install a distribution aimed at security analysis and system penetration, when it will do it all from the live cd.

Normally I would suggest to someone new, as you suggest, to linux, to start with something like a live cd, this minimises risk but still provides a learning opportunity.

Samac

Well I was using Nero 7 Ultra to burn my disks. Anyway I finally realized what was wrong. Out of the many programs I tried, in burning the CDs a few of them gave me what known as a CRC error. I did some research and came across a little program that will check my CD to see if it is bad. Well not only was my original disk bad but I also used it agains the original image and found out it to was also bad. So my solution was simple. Re-download the image and burn it, and it worked. So now I have a working copy but I am having MANY issues actually installing it to the drive. Yes it is an external USB drive. I have it installed and have done so in many ways, I just seem to not beable to boot to it. like right now I fallowed a video on the offensive-security site https://www.offensive-security.com/m.../dualboot.html and after editing lilo.conf (even though Im not dual booting) I boot to the hard drive and my screen gets something like this...

LILO 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99

If any of you could watch the video or have any ideas how I can get this working would be seen as amazing. I have tried so much and so many techniques.FYI my external that I am working on is seen and dev/sdb in case that helps with any advice that might be given.

Thank you all for the help

Lilo is looking for itself on the master boot record, this will be on /dev/hda, as you are installing to an external USB drive I suspect you primary hard drive is filled by windows.

Installing lilo to your mbr should fix the problem, but if you don't do it right you could cause yourself more problems.

If you don't want to install lilo to your mbr then I would suggest, as your usb drive is detected, creating a boot disk, using the command makebootdisk.

Samac

Yes my primary drive that came in my laptop is /dev/sda. So if I understand what you are saying, even though I would be installing Backtrack 2 onto /dev/sdb I would still need lilo to be writen to the MBR or /dev/sda? If thats the case I think I would feel mor comfortable leaving that option alone and creating a boot disk. Now If I were to create a boot disk, it will put it on a CD and not a floppy correct? Also with creating a boot disk, is that something the can be done anytime during setting this up or is there a specific place and time I need to do it?

Thank you

I dont actually use backtrack, so I am not sure where the make boot disk option is.

If I did use it, I would only use it as a live cd, which rather negates the question.

As this is based on slax, why dont you download the slax usb boot cd for the kernel number that backtrack 2 uses, or search this forum for "usb boot cd howto".

Samac

Well I have made some progress now. I fallowed a video on the offensive-security site again and this time rather than trying to put lilo onto /dev/sdb I put it onto /dev/sda which is the hard drive that cam in my laptop with Vista. So the boot screen comes up for me to choose weather I want to boot to Linux or Windoze, only when I choose Linux I was getting this...

Loading Linux......

Now when I do it it starts running all the text stuff down my screen and at the bottom I get this.

VFS: Cannot open root device "813" or unknown-block (8,19)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (8,19)

Vista boots perfectly though. If that "root=" thing has to do with lilo.conf I have it set up as "root= /dev/sdb3" as that is my "/" partition. That is correct right?

Well its been quite a while and I have had someone on another forum try to help and he did a ton to try to help me get it working. As it sits now I have a fresh install of BT2 on my drive. Here is my drive setup.

/dev/sdb1 /boot +10M ext2
/dev/sdb2 SWAP +1024
/dev/sdb3 root +5120 ext3

Here is the error I get when I try to boot to the drive which is an external drive btw.

VS: Cannot open root device "813" or unknown-block (8,19)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (8,19)

Any thoughts?