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

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

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:'

   My strategy for building this kernel - since the machine is very
new hardware - was to steal the .config file from the Install CD, so
while in the boot environment I did

zcat /proc/config.gz >/mnt/gentoo/config_CD

and then after the chroot did

emerge =gentoo-sources-2.6.29-r5
cd /usr/src
ln -s linux-2.6.29-gentoo-r5 linux
cd linux
mv /config_CD ./.config
make menuconfig

I checked that ext2 and ext3 were buit-in and not modules, built the
kernel and modules, installed the kernel in /boot, edited grub, exited
the install and tried booting. Clearly the kernel is found but then
the kernel cannot, I guess, find my hard drive /root partition?

   I used that specific kernel because that's what my install CD used
and that kernel had no problems mounting the drive after it booted.

   What am I doing wrong? Is it incorrect to use a .config file from a
CD and hope to get the same results? I do not use initrd which I think
is different than the CD so if I need to turn something off please let
me know.

Thanks,
Mark