[gentoo-dev] Boot after installation doesn't

[gentoo-dev] Boot after installation doesn't

[Robin Rowe]

Hi. I am installing Gentoo for the first time.

The installation goes off without a hitch until I try to reboot. First boot
from the hard drive hangs the machine hard with a rapidly repeating loader
error message -- either L 02 or GRUB repeating over and over again depending
upon which boot loader I install. I have several other Linux distros running
fine loaded on other drives (on rails) on this machine.

I asked for help on the gentoo users list first, but the suggestions I
received lacked insight and had me trying things at random. That didn't
work, and as a developer (on another project) just doesn't feel right to me.
I want to understand what's wrong, not just have the problem magically go
away. I followed your installation directions very carefully and went
through the (long) installation process twice -- starting over with
reformatting the drive.

When it boots from the hard drive I get "GRUB GRUB GRUB" and so forth.
Booting GRUB from floppy gets farther, but kernel panics when it tries to
mount root:

    grub> kernel (hd0,0)/bzImage root=/dev/hda3
    grub> boot
    ... loads kernel and drivers ok ...
    Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03

Here's my hard disk GRUB setup:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)

And contents of /boot/grub/grub.conf:

default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/bzImage root=/dev/hda3

Partitions:

/dev/hda1    100MB boot ext3
/dev/hda2    512MB swap
/dev/hda3    4GB root reiserfs

There's nothing else on the drive. I physically swap out drives (on rails)
to boot the other distros.

Has ext3 and reiserfs and the other items mentioned in the install
instructions built into kernel (not modules).

It seems that I have not installed the boot loader correctly, but how could
I make the same mistake with both LILO and GRUB? I would suspect the drive
itself, but the partitions mount just fine when booting from CD. Is there
anything left to try besides installing on a completely different drive?

Insights?

Thanks,

Robin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robin.Rowe@MovieEditor.com   Hollywood, California
www.CinePaint.org   Free motion picture and still image editing software


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