I have been trying to install the OS on a Dinasaur server (P3 723Mhz X2, 1.4GB RAM) that has SCSI hard drives. They use a HP NetRAID 1Si SCSI controler card.
I've follow the instructions verbadum and keep on coming up w/ the same error after the OS installs:

Kernal Panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)

Any help at all would be much appreciated.


PS I'm a n00b so take it easy... i have close to no idea about linux

HI Mmendel1,

Most likely the /etc/fstab isn't setup for the scsi drives and would be showing something like /dev/hda1 where I believe it should be /dev/sda1.

You should be able to boot from the install cd and fix that area. If you give a few more details I'm sure some will be able to offer more help.

What version, manual install? drive needs to be at least ~10 gig?

Also try a search for scsi as someone may have been down this road. Here is a link that one of the guys made special to help with the search. You may want to bookmark it as it is hard to find if lost. (should be a front page sticky item)
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q ... as_qdr=all

Mike

That error message normally means that you have supplied the wrong root device to the kernel.

What partition is the root? /dev/sda1? Then at the boot prompt, try to add "root=/dev/sda1" as kernel parameter. If that works, you need to reinstall the boot loader with the right root partition set. With lilo you add "root=/dev/sda1" in lilo.conf and then rerun lilo.

I have 6 18GB SCSI HDDs, I cut them into 4 partitions as outlined in the manual install instructions. I'm using the latest install CD.

When I'm prompted to witch partition to install to it shows up as "/dev/sda1" (that is what i set as the boot partition)



I tried this:
Reboot with the CD in: when it gave me a prompt "boot:" I entered "knoppmyth root=/dev/sda1" then ran the install again with the same errors.

This feels like the only thing I can do because when I boot without the CD it goes straight into knoppmyth initializations and then to the error without giving me a chance to do anything.

Thanks for the help... It feels like i'm one miscommunication away from figuring this out!

When linux boots the following takes place:

1. The boot loader is loaded from MBR

2. The boot loader in turn loads the kernel, AND pass any boot parameters needed

3. The kernel boots and the mounts the root file system as it is configured with or as given by boot parameters

These steps are completely different from when you choose what partition to install onto. That only tells knoppmyth whit partition it should copy the files to.

It is not while booting from the CD you should give it the root parameter, is when booting from the disk. If it works, you must modify the boot loader (lilo) to tell the kernel which partition is root.