Kernel Panic - not syncing VFS in RHEL6.3

[hjazz6]

Hi all,

My server is running RHEL6.3, and after shutting down, I am unable to boot up the server. I did not perform any upgrades or changes to the server prior to the shut down, and this is a new server without much usage.

I got this error after the grub screen.

i8042.c: Can't read CTR while initializing i8042.
RAMDISK: incomplete write (32543 != 32768)
write error
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64 #1
Call Trace: 
   panic
   mount_block_root
   trace_kmalloc
   mount_root
   prepare_namespace
   kernel_init
   child_rip
   kernel_rip
   child_rip

I am able to boot into Rescue mode, and I followed the instructions on this website (after changing the name of the initrd), but still get the same error.

What is wrong and what else can I try? If nothing works, I'm going to reinstall the OS.

Thank you.

[Rubberman]

Boot into rescue mode, and run fsck on your / (root) file system. On my RHEL 6 system, that is /dev/sda3. The error indicates that something happened to the root file system. This is rare, unless you shut down the system in an unclean manner (forced power-off for example).