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

[Duane Foster]

> On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 20:22, Duane Foster wrote:
> > Greetings all,
> >=20
> > Am working with a stock Beige G3 300Mhz,  196M ram,  UW=20
> SCSI 4G MacOS8.1 and 4G IDE drive for YDL. The IDE hard drive=20
> has been initialized as an Apple OS drive and then=20
> unallocated before the linux install.  This is recognized by=20
> Disk Druid and seems correct for installation.
> > I was able to run the installation kernel and do a complete=20
> install (YDL3.01) without a hitch.
> > Back to BootX, turned off Ramdisk, set the kernel to the=20
> regular (non-boot) version, and set the root partition to /dev/hda5.
> >=20
> > 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
> >=20
> > I have tried the installation with the hard drive on both=20
> ATA busses and the drive is jumpered as Master.
> > I can see the initial kernel probe recognize that the hard=20
> drive partitions as hda1, hda2 hda3, etc.
> > but it cannot find the root filesystem.
> >=20


The kernel found the root filesystem when I added "root=3D/dev/hda5" =
string to the kernel options in BootX.  This seems redundant since there =
is a specific entry for the / partition in BootX, but this additional =
argument did the trick.

Many thanks to all those who pitched in with ideas and experiences...  =
much appreciated.

duane