Linux Kernel Diagnosis Question...

[Calum]

anybody got any idea what this means?:
 

quote:HPFS: hpfs_read_super: Not HPFS
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:00

The kernel which is so distressed is the linux 2.0 kernel from BasicLinux 1.7. There's three ways to load BasicLinux, you can run it from true DOS mode, where it uses loadlin to kill DOS and runs from RAM, you can install it to your hard drive, or you can use their script to make 2 custom DOS bootdisks which start to load DOS and then run loadlin to boot BasicLinux. This last method is the one i am currently using, to get a feel for this linux before my new (old) laptop arrives, which will be BasicLinux's ultimate destination.
Anyway, i eventually got the WinME crippled version of DOS to make me the bootdisks (which involves quite a bit of trial and error and the deletion by hand of some of the less necessary DOS files off the boot disks at a crucial moment), only to find that DOS loads, loadlin executes, the kernel starts booting up for 50 or 60 lines, then it deposits the above message onscreen as the last two lines of its output and hangs.

Interestingly it loads into BasicLinux no problem at all on my mate's Compaq P866 15E desktop machine, but when i try it using the same floppies on the laptop (with SiS chipset) i get this error.
Any idea what's going on?

thanks in advance...

[Calum]

aha! by the way -

actually, it looks (from what google told me) like this is an error that has something to do with not having drivers, or kernel support or something like this, for the type of disk or filesystem that i am trying to use. This is kind of odd to me since this distro of linux loads entirely off the FAT formatted floppies directly into 4MB of RAM, with NO disk access whatsoever. so what's the problem? weird...

[pkd_lives]

It's looking for HPFS, which is OS/2 filesystem of choice, and that really should have nothing to do with it.

However what may help is that you created it in ME, and I think you SHOULD create in a pure DOS mode, I found a short and basically useless article by a guy who had the same issue, he could not install on his but he could on another system, with the same disks, however I can find no follow-up or resolution, and therefore it is crap.

It was suggested that his copy was corrupted, but if it works on one system then corruption is unlikely.

[Calum]

i downloaded a disk image of a MSDOS5.0 bootdisk, which will be true DOS, hopefully i can boot using it, then use the resultant DOS to create the BasicLinux disks. That should bypass any winME trickery...
will post results, and thanks!

edit! i just relised that for the first time ever, i created a DOS startup disk IN LINUX!!! i just did 'dd if=msd500bd.img of=/dev/hd0' and whammo! took a lot less time than it does in WinME as well... linux does things just as well as windows, and faster too!

[ November 20, 2002: Message edited by: Calum: Linux Commando ]

[Calum]

ok, update: i downloaded a zipped image of a DOS 5.0 bootdisk from a link i found at bootdisk.com, i made the bootdisk using dd, and then i rebooted to WinME DOS (since DOS 5.0 doesn't recognise my FAT32 partition, or my ext3 partition) and used the basiclinux make_fd script to make the two floppies, using the MSDOS 5.0 floppy as the base.

Hey presto it works fine. Not sure why, but i think it might be something to do with winME not doing 100% proper FAT16 (or is it FAT12 for floppies?) filesystems. i don't know much about it but anyway, it now works, and all i did was change DOS versions.

thanks very much for all help and advice.