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

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
In this case it was the chipset drivers not being built in. I'm now
booting successfully into Gentoo, albeit a very stripped down
nothing-but-install-CD system.

At least now, as far as Gentoo is concerned, I can work with tools on
the hard drive and maybe see what I can make the machine do. hdparm
says 65MB/Sec so I've got enough disk speed to make an emerge @world
go reasonably fast. top shows all 4 processors. This is my first SMP
machine running Gentoo. I'm looking forward to it. My graphic
performance (not important to me as I do mostly audio stuff) will be
low as I'm using the 900MHz Intel VGA that's built into the processor
of the i5-661, not the chipset, so far less traffic to the North
Bridge if I understand correctly. We'll see.

I'll be back. Windows still doesn't boot and I don't so far think it's
a grub problem but I need to do some research on the error messages...

Thanks!