Re: Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount fs on 09:00

["Kevin J. Cummings" <cummings@kjchome.homeip.net>]

Ralica Kirilova wrote:
> Hi, all
> I have a Linux box (Linux Slackware 9.1, uname -r --> 2.4.22),
>  with two SCSI Seagate hard disks,
> I have software RAID1 running.
> Everything is OK.
> So I try to precompile the kernel
> 
> make clean
> make oldconfig     // use this in order to not to have mistake in
> configuration.
>                             // this is running kernel configuration
> make dep, make, make bzImage,
> make modules, make modules_install, make install
> 
> cp new image in /boot, add new image in lilo, run lilo, reboot
> The error:
> Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount fs on 09:00
> 
> I don't know if I explained it right.
> 
>  Any help is appriciated
> 
> P.S. Sorry for my bad english

What type of filesystem is your "root" partition?
Is all of the necessary support for this fs compiled into your kernel?
If not, did you remake the proper initrd.img file for your new kernel so 
that it contains the proper modules for your root partition?

The chronology is the following:

System BIOS determines the active partition and loads and executes the 
boot loader.

The system boot loader knows where to find the Linux kernel image, how 
to load it, and to de-compress it if necessary.  This kernel image needs 
to contain the necessary file systems builtin to it in order to find and 
mount the root partition so that it can load any necessary modules 
needed to complete your system boot up.

If (like RedHat) your boot loader boots an initial RamDisk image, this 
image can contain copies of various modules needed for the kernel image 
to load so that it has all the necessary modules it needs to find/load 
the root file system.  When it mounts the root partition, it unmounts 
the initial ramdisk and your system boot then continues "normally".

Is this clear enough?

Your RAID fs is a "complicated" file system, and may involve more than a 
simple driver (like an IDE driver or SCSI driver) in order to mount the 
root partition.  All of the necessary support must either already be a 
part of your kernel (making it larger to boot from) or be able to be 
loaded from an initrd image during startup.

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome@rcn.com
cummings@kjchome.homeip.net
cummings@kjc386.framingham.ma.us