Gentoo Installation Stuff Part 2
Another error message:

VFS: cannot open root device "sda7" or unknown-block (0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option

OK, so I built a kernel, tried to get everything working, but when I started, I got a kernel panic from this line in grub.conf:

kernel /bzImage root=/dev/sda7

where "/dev/sda7" is "/"

aic7xxx is built into the kernel, so first let's try to build it as a module (as per some random googling) and see how it goes.

Aha. Turns out I hadn't built the aic7xxx driver at all. I was using some weird IBM thing. I'm also not sure which RAID configuration I'm using (3 drives, 9gb ea, total 18gb, so one striping drive?) As per this RAID primer, I'm pretty sure I'm using RAID 3. I go to select the proper bit in "menuconfig", but, as it turns out, I can ignore the various RAID specifics since I'm using an adapter. Ok. Built aic7xxx into the kernel. Time to recompile the kernel for round 2..

Wow. less than 2 minutes to compile!

And failure.

Dicking around for another two hours, install /devfs, all that, I finally decide to build aic7xxx as a module.

fucking swell. I biffed my "emerge" somehow. Fuck it. Reinstalling everything :^S

No! There will be no reinstalling! Turns out I hadn't been properly mounting my /var partition, just lumping it all into "/"

OK, used "genkernel --menuconfig all", tweaked it a bit, and came back to this error:

Block device /dev/sdax is not a valid root device

Hopping into the shell from there (which they thoughtfully provided for me), I found that only my scsi host0 is being detected (that being the cdrom drive), and only after i "modprobe aic7xxx."

Sigh, back to the drawing board.



- posted by frank crist @ 1:34 PM