beachboy

I installed knoppix 4.03 to the hard drive from the live cd doing knoppix-installer. Everything worked good with the live cd with no problems. when I try and boot from the hard drive I get the message below.

Kernel Panic - not syncing: vfs: unable to mount root fs on unknown - block (33.1)

Can anybody Help with this Problem?

Thank You

Riqz85

i have this problem too. Dont know why cos noone is answering. But i got through this problem for the moment using the boot floppy that was created when installing knoppix. Try booting from the floppy.Should work for the moment. I-m waiting for an answer on kernel panic too

beachboy

Thanks Riqz85 for the information on useing the boot floppy.

drakebasher

If you are able to use a boot floppy to get into your system, but you cannot when you use the bootloader on the hard drive, it is certainly an error in the bootloader configuration file. This can easily be fixed, but it requires a few bits of information:

• 1. What bootloader is it? I don't recall if Knoppix uses Grub or LILO or something else. You need to know this in order to know what file needs to be edited. I think LILO uses /etc/lilo.conf and Grub uses either /boot/grub/grub.conf or (ditto)/menu.lst
  2. What is the layout of your system: The problem is that the bootloader is being pointed to the wrong location for your root directory. Linux recognizes drives based on their location in the system. Grub recognizes them based on order found.
  3. Which drive is the "boot device", that is, in your BIOS setup, are you booting the first hard drive or another? I think that this is an issue only if you are using the Grub bootloader.

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/IMHO
//got nothin'
///this use to look better

beachboy

the drive is hde1

the boot in bios is cdrom first then c drive

it looks like grub to me

drakebasher

I would try this:

1. Boot to Linux using the boot floppy.
2. Use a text editor to open the file /boot/grub/grub.conf
3. Change one character, save and reboot.

In grub.conf, you will see at least one "script" with this format:

root (hdx,x)
kernel /<kernelFileName> root=/dev/hdxn
initrd /<initrdFileName>

The problem is in the "root=/dev/hdxn" part. That should be changed to hde1 if that is the partition of your root directory. Don't change anything else.

If you want to give this a trial run before changing it, you can do this:
Without the floppy, boot your system. As soon as you see the splashscreen, press an up/down arrow key to stop the coutdouwn timer. Scroll to select your Linux system and then press 'e' for edit. You should see the "script" I described above. Scroll to highlight the line that starts with "kernel" and press 'e' for edit. Change the "root=/dev..." part to "root=/dev/hde1" and press enter to accept the change and then 'b' to boot. If it works, open /boot/grub/grub.conf and edit the same way. Of course you must be logged in as root to edit the file.

__________________
/IMHO
//got nothin'
///this use to look better

Riqz85

I found out the problem...I think.
I was editing from the boot menu. And I compared the two boot "lines" from the floppy and the one that doesnt work from the Grub...
Floppy;
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root /dev/hda1 ro ramdisk=100000 lang=us apm=power-off nomce vga=791
Grub(that does not boot)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root /dev/hda1 ro ###disk=100000 init /etc/initlang=us apm=power-off nomce quiet vga=791

I noticed the three ### instead of ram. so changed it to ram and it booted. Was it really that simple.If so why would it have ### instead of ram????

drakebasher

If it booted, then yes, it was really that simple. So now you have learned how easy it can be to fix what may seem like a huge problem. That's Linux: I mean the part about how you can actually fix it.

Why did it have ###disk? That's a really good question. I can't imagine. Anyways, I'm glad you found and fixed the problem.

__________________
/IMHO
//got nothin'
///this use to look better

Riqz85

ii think linux is really all trial and error. But trial and error actually works on linux...unlike windows where trial and error brings to doom and death

budman7

beachboy, could you post the entire contents of the menu.lst file.
Using the livecd, do
Then copy and paste the contents here.


I have worked with beachboy on this problem before.
There is a pci add-on card that takes up the master slot. hda and hdb
And the cd/dvd drives take up the secondary slot. hdc and hdd
The hard drive that has Knoppix on it is a removable hard drive. making it hde

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