On a fresh install of knoppmyth R4V5, I tried to upgrade the kernel to 2.6 by using the following commands:

It downloaded and installed successfully.

Then edited /etc/lilo.conf to add an entry for the new kernel and initrd. Then ran lilo to update the boot sector.

Now, the problem is when I try to boot with this new kernel, it hangs with this message:

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,1)

I think this might be a SATA problem? Not sure, so any suggestion will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

I suggest that you wait for the alpha release of R5 which is iminent (read hours away see http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3485). It comes with a 2.6.9 kernel.

if you use apt-get to upgrade the kernel you will have to put the initrd line in lilo. all kernel images use initrd, but the default kernel in knoppmyth doesn't.

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Yup, I have tried with and without the initrd line in lilo.conf

Any other ideas? Thanks for your help, even though R5 will be out soon, I'd still like to know how to upgrade the kernel with apt-get. Maybe if you could point me to a howto/guide that you know works with Knoppmyth?

Thanks again

The 2.6 kernel requires an updated version of the module-init-tools among other things. You can follow the howto at the KnopmythWiki here http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/inde ... gradeHowTo or you can make it easy on yourself and install from the R5 alpha that is comming out on Saturday.

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Thanks. It's not exactly what I was looking for because that KnoppMythWiki describes how to install kernel 2.6 from source.

Instead, I want to install kernel 2.6 image with apt-get, without compiling from source. Guess I'll try apt-get install module-init-tools ???

Anyways, it's not all too important now since R5 is due soon. But I'm still interested, just for the sake of curiosity .. if there's a quick explaination then please enlighten me :

I wrote that KernelUpgradeHowTo, and your comments regarding initrd reminded me of a similar problem to your's that I had. I couldn't get the kernel to boot with an initrd (I kept getting the same error that you had). KnoppMyth didn't come with a mkinitrd script and I couldnt work out where to get one that would work with KnoppMyth. I ended up doing without the initrd, but the important thing without an initrd is that you MUST have the kernel support for the filesystem of your root partition compiled in (not compiled as a module). I think you also need all of the drivers required to access your disk compiled in too. I suspect that most kernel distributions that you get are not going to have sata support compiled in, so unless you can work out how to get an initrd suitable for your hardware and filesystem setup, you are probably out of luck (without compiling the kernel from source).

Thanks Greg. So I guess the initrd that was downloaded with apt-get install kernel-image-2.6-686 either doesn't have sata support, or doesn't work with KnoppMyth.

So my conclusion is that it's not worth any more time figuring it out

On to R5

Yeah. I gave up figuring out the initrd, but I had an alternative (build everytghing I needed into the kernel). I guess your alternative is R5 which I think makes yuou the lucky one. Nice timing.

Greg, a bit off topic, but it sounded like you are using a SATA hard drive. If so, do you have any problems with DTV?

No sata here. Move along please.