From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751091AbWFIBnd (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jun 2006 21:43:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751102AbWFIBnd (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jun 2006 21:43:33 -0400 Received: from proof.pobox.com ([207.106.133.28]:48257 "EHLO proof.pobox.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751091AbWFIBnc (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jun 2006 21:43:32 -0400 Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 18:43:25 -0700 From: Paul Dickson To: Arjan van de Ven Cc: rahul@genebrew.com, ram.gupta5@gmail.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: booting without initrd Message-Id: <20060608184325.5c470dcf.paul@permanentmail.com> In-Reply-To: <1149813659.3124.31.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> References: <728201270606070913g2a6b23bbj9439168a1d8dbca8@mail.gmail.com> <1149813659.3124.31.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.4 (GTK+ 2.9.1; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 02:40:59 +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 13:40 -0400, Rahul Karnik wrote: > > On 6/7/06, Ram Gupta wrote: > > > I am trying to boot with 2.6.16 kernel at my desktop running fedora > > > core 4 . It does not boot without initrd generating the message "VFS: > > > can not open device "804" or unknown-block(8,4) > > > Please append a correct "root=" boot option > > > Kernel panic - not syncing : VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,4) > > > > AFAIK Fedora sets up the kernel command line with "root=LABEL=/" in > > grub.conf and therefore needs the initrd in order to work correctly. > > If you do not want an initrd, then change this to > > "root=/dev/" in grub.conf. > > it's more than that; also udev is used from the initrd to populate a > ramfs /dev, if you go without the initrd you need to populate the > *real* /dev manually first Looking through my rc.sysinit (pre-fc6), udev gets started after root is mounted (I haven't looked at the initrd). More than likely, something isn't compiled into the kernel (either left as a module or left out entirely) that is required to access the root volume. Without the initrd, no modules can be loaded nor lvm started to find the root volume. Where is your root volume and which filesystem are you using. -Paul