Unable to mount root fs -- Beige G3 with IDE drive

[Duane Foster]

Greetings all,

Am working with a stock Beige G3 300Mhz,  196M ram,  UW SCSI 4G MacOS8.1 =
and 4G IDE drive for YDL. The IDE hard drive has been initialized as an =
Apple OS drive and then unallocated before the linux install.  This is =
recognized by Disk Druid and seems correct for installation.
I was able to run the installation kernel and do a complete install =
(YDL3.01) without a hitch.
Back to BootX, turned off Ramdisk, set the kernel to the regular =
(non-boot) version, and set the root partition to \dev\hda5.

Upon restarting Linux there is a kernel panic:
VFS: Cannot open root device "hda5" or 00:00
Please append a correct "root=3D" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

I have tried the installation with the hard drive on both ATA busses and =
the drive is jumpered as Master.
I can see the initial kernel probe recognize that the hard drive =
partitions as hda1, hda2 hda3, etc.
but it cannot find the root filesystem.

I am wondering if the IDE hard drive is faulty? or there is some =
procedural step I have overlooked?

Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated

duane foster