Installation - boot error: kernel panic

[magus]

I guess this one is a real thinker... my only guess is that the error is in the kernel, since everything else looks fine, ubuntu installed fine, the live CD recognizes the SATA drive... believe or not, I'm having fun, it's quite a challenge!

Question: does any of you know exactly wich files uses Gentoo to boot the installation CD? besides the kernel and the ramdisk, where are the scripts located? thanks!

[JoeB]

Ahh Haa..So it's not just me. I could have written this post myself, almost word for word.

I'm installing to a Seagate 160 GB SATA drive on an Intel P4 system. Trying to do a Stage 3, I tried 2.6.12-r6 and 2.6.14-r2 both (I think thats right...I'm at work.. )

Tried GRUB and LILO both, tried including every SATA and SCSI driver in the kernel config, my FSTAB is identical to yours and I'm getting the same error. I also wondered if it is a SATA problem, why doesn't it fail before it tries to bootstrap the kernel? Its reading the disk fine up to that point.

This is a 'scratch' drive that I've used for FC, Debian and SuSE in the past, so I know its not hardware. I haven't given up on Gentoo yet and I'll let you know if I learn anything helpful.

[magus]

What I am thinking so far is that for some reason the kernel fails to recognize the SATA drive. I mean the following: I tried installing gentoo on a virtual machine emulating the hard disk as SCSI and arrive to this exact point. However, if I change the emulation to IDE it works wonders... maybe some driver needs to be compiled native on the kernel instead of module? or the other way around? I am using an 80GB samsung sp0812c, and the chipsetis a VIA VT8237R... I did not try with the VIA82CXXX support when compiling the kernel though (not native, only modular with genkernel). Maybe there is the catch... I'm going to try.