Re: can't boot due to root device problem

[Mario Klebsch]

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On Sunday, 30. September 2001 17:34, Bob Berman wrote:
> I am sure that this is the problem. But I have another Linux
> install on the same machine and that boots fine, although
> it is SuSe 7.0 vs. this one is SuSe 7.2. This was an
> initial install from CD and I had never booted it before.
> Now I have to figure out some way to boot it.

As someone else has already written, you probably do not boot the
initial ram disk. The initial ram disk is an additional file system,
which is used as a temporary root filesystem prior to mounting the real
root filesystem. This ram disk somtimes does contain drivers needed to
mount the root filesystem.

Allthough this IMHO is broken by design and a popular source of
trouble, linux included it to allow distributions without custom
kernels. GRUB does have an option to load the initial ramdisk, but I
cannot tell you about it, because I do not use it. I suppose, the GRUB
documentation will contain some hints about the initial RAM disk.

I would just boot your first linux system and build a kerlen which
includes the drivers needed. This kernel can be put on a floppy disk or
bootet via grub or lilo.

73, Mario
- --
Mario Klebsch                                           address@hidden
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