[ILUG] VFS : Error mounting root - SOLVED

[Kevin Philp]

It turns out that the new 2.6.11 kernel has my SATA drive as sda as mentioned 
on the list. So when I altered /etc/fstab and replaced all the /dev/hdeX 
lines with /dev/sdaX lines I could boot into the new kernel (using 
root=/dev/sda5 on the boot line) and fix lilo.

I now have a fully functional 2.6.11 kernel

Perhaps someone can explain to me - as I am a bit thick on this point - why my 
2.6.7 kernel, which had a similar config with

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VIA=y

Showed all the drives as /dev/hde .... was I accidentally using another driver 
that saw the SATA drive as an ordinary IDE drive?

Googling for "VFS : Error mounting root" gives 132,000 hits so there are quite 
a few people out there struggling!

Kevin.






On Tuesday 31 May 2005 15:11, Timothy Murphy wrote:
On Tue 31 May 2005 10:47, Kevin Philp wrote:
> I recently decided to try to upgrade a kernel on my home Gentoo box from
> 2.6.7 to 2.6.11 and have hit a problem. When I reboot I get:
>
> VFS : Error mounting root....

...

> Any ideas? Its not crucial as the machine works fine with the 2.6.7 kernel
> but its annoying me.

Maybe grub (or LILO) is confused about your hard disk setup.
If you were running grub you could say
"grub-install --recheck /dev/<whatever>"

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland