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Entry title: All sorts of trouble.
Date added:  Tuesday, July 6 2004, 07:41AM
Written by:  Agilo (agilo3@gmail.com)
Entry ID:    89
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Well, I've not posted for a while, and there's a reason behind it.

Roughly a week ago, I compiled the 2.6.7 kernel (straight from kernel.org),
without any problems.
Now, I have a new monitor, and wanted to reconfigure X11 to adjust to my new
monitor, and install the latest NVidia driver that was released a few days
ago.

So, I configured X okay, and was installing the NVidia driver, when it halted
on an error, saying I needed to switch off 'rivafb' in my kernel, thus having
to recompile the kernel.

After the kernel (and modules) compiled, I placed the files (bzImage and
System.map) in /boot, as I always do, and rebooted.

Now here is where it started happening.

Once booting into 2.6.7, it gave me an error saying "Kernel panic: VFS: Unable
to mount root fs /dev/hda3".
Though, I know hda3 is my root filesystem.

So I rebooted again, and luckily I still had my 2.6.6 kernel, so I booted into
that.
The first thing I did was check my kernel settings, which were all okay in my
eyes.
To be safe, I deleted the .config file, and grabbed my backed up copy of my
2.6.6 .config file.
I did a 'make mrproper', copied the backup .config file, 'make oldconfig' to
set up the "new" features, 'make menuconfig' to check to be certain (and
re-removed the 'rivafb'. -- hey, I'm not that stupid, heh), then compiled the
kernel and modules, and installed the lot.

Rebooted again, and, the same problem.

After doing the same for a few hundred time, I got so sick of it, that I
re-downloaded the 2.6.7 kernel completely, and set that one up manually.
But STILL the same damn error occurd.

I got so frustrated, I made a post on the Gentoo forums (first time I've ever
seeked help on a forum, mind you).
That didn't help.
So I decided to post my problem on a newsgroup (alt.os.linux.gentoo), which
kind of helped, but not really.

In the end (yesterday), I found my answer.

It seems that I needed to switch on "CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION" in the kernel.
Which is weird, because in my 2.6.6 kernel, I did not set it myself, in fact,
I don't remember setting it at all.

Either way, it's fixed now, and I set up X11 accordingly, and installed the
latest NVidia driver.

On top of that, I tweaked my kernel so heavily, it's now 1.6MB, instead of the
previous 2.2MB.

And, I'm now using the "CONFIG_4KSTACKS" option in the kernel, just because
now I can. :D


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