KERNEL PANIC!!! Need Help

[SAJChurchey]

Well,

After about a year of using Linux, I finally got my first kernel panic. What does it mean to have a kernel panic, and what does this one in particular mean?

 

quote:
    VFS: Cannot open root device "LABEL=/" or 00:00
    Please append a correct "root=" boot option
    Kernel panic : VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

And more importantly, how do i fix this one in particular?

[Master of Reality]

this happens when you start up? Is this right after installing or editing your bootloader? What bootloader do you use? What Linux do you use?

[slave]

It looks like you screwed up your lilo/grub boot loader somehow!  I hope you made a boot floppy, but if not, then you can (most likely) use your linux install CD as a rescue disk.

[Master of Reality]

it will be easy to fix. I just need to know which bootlaoder you use, which distro, and do you know which patition you installed linux on?

[Master of Reality]

you could do that^, or you good do it the easy way. If you know your root partition and if using grub then just choose the edit option when the bootloader comes up and add "root=/dev/hd*" where * = the root partition.

[Calum]

this is red hat's (and maybe other distros') innovative way of editing the fstab that's at fault. in my opinion, the fstab should contain numbered partitions of the type /dev/hda3 or whatever, but red hat likes to call them LABEL=/home or something instead, so what i would do is boot from a bootdisk (like this one) and then use vi to edit my fstab (you will need to mount whichever your root drive is first to get to the fstab within) and what i would do is replace the LABEL=/ in the fstab with /dev/hda6 (which is the partition i have my root filesystem on, change as necessary like MoR says), then save, quit and reboot.

that's what i would do.

edit: this works if i am using GrUB and my grub menu.lst (grub.conf in red hat) is okay, but if it is indeed the bootloader conf screwed up i would do the steps above but use vi to correct the relevant config file and then rerun lilo (if required) and reboot.

[ May 07, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: hopelessly outnumbered ]

[SAJChurchey]

Yeah,

It was the bootloader, whnen RHN installed the RPM it did not write the GRUB file right.  I managed to fix it a day or so after my first post.

[Calum]

did you do anything that we didn't mention here? if so, what was it, just for interest's sake?