Re: [gentoo-amd64] If CD boots then why won't the hard drive?

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi again,
>   Same new machine - new thread so as to not confuse the other thread
> about flags.
>
>   I made enough headway with grub to get it to find a kernel and try
> to boot, but fails with the message:
>
> VFS: Cannot open root device "sda2" or unknown-block(2,0)
> Please append a correct "root=" boot option; Here are the available partitions:
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(2,0)
>
> Note that is lists nothing when it says 'Here are the available partitions:'

It really seems like it's missing the appropriate filesystem driver to me.

Since you mentioned ext2 and ext3 built into the kernel but not ext4,
I wonder if the auto-detect is trying to mount your partition as ext4
type? Try to add the rootfstype=ext3 (or whatever your root FS type
is) to your boot line to force it to use the specific filesystem
driver you want.