Installation of serial port card

[jspring]

Hi there:

We have Kubuntu 5.10 (Linux version 2.6.12-9-386). It's installed on a PC104. We have added a multiserial port card, so I tried configuring serial.h and rebuilding and reinstalling the kernel. Everything compiled and installed fine, but when I got to the part where I edit grub.conf, I found that Kubuntu instead uses a file named menu.lst and a slightly different format (see code fragment below).

After editing menu.lst I rebooted the computer and it crashed with the error message:

[123456.453000]VFS: Cannot open root device "hda1" or unknown-block (0,0)
[123456.453000]Please append a correct "root=" boot option
[123456.453000]Kernel panic-not syncing:VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Looking at menu.lst, the last entry is the one I added. I copied it from the second entry (for the recovery version of Ubuntu), except of course I changed the kernel to the one I had built. I tried booting with and without the initrd.

I'm stuck. Do you have any ideas?

Thank you!

John Spring

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-9-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-9-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

title Linux-df
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-df root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd-df
boot
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

[engineuity]

You do need the initrd line. Perhaps you have the name wrong? You should be able to still boot into one of the older kernels (kernel 2.6.12-9-386 or the recovery one). Doing an ls of /boot, you can see if the name is correct or not. If not, change it (initrd-df and vmlinuz-df) to the right name.

What did you do to recompile/reinstall the kernel? I think most tools add to your menu.lst for you.

[Zelmo]

That kind of error pops up if your disk controller's drivers aren't compiled into the kernel, or if you're using initrd, then the disk controller's module wasn't built.

Did you remember to copy the previous kernel's .config into the new kernel's source directory, and run 'make oldconfig'? That gives you a known working config, which you can then tweak as needed.