Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 5165
lilo fails to pass correct root dev
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:51 EDT
I run RH 6.0 on an ASUS L7300 laptop. The kernel will frequently (at random) panic at boot time with the message VFS: Cannot open root device 00:30 Sometimes it will boot correctly for several times. It is not a misconfiguration since the same harddrive boots fine in a different (brand) laptop. Several people have reported the same problem. I have a correct root=/dev/hda5 entry in my lilo.conf and I already tried rdev to hard code the option into the kernel. The only remedy is to specify the option root=/dev/hda5 at the lilo prompt.
*** Bug 4758 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** Arguments passed to the lilo boot prompt do not reach the kernel. Even the default ones setup by lilo (like BOOT=) don't make it. Try "cat /proc/cmdline". This will sometimes cause kernels to not boot, and I'd assume that it would not boot kernels installed on a disk other than the kernel default boot device. Probably not the desired effect for a "Red Hat Certified System". ;) BTW: Grub works fine ------- Additional Comments From gafton@redhat.com 09/20/99 11:19 ------- Doug is working on a fix for this. ------- Additional Comments From gafton@redhat.com 09/20/99 11:19 ------- *** Bug 2720 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** On an Intel Sitka Platform (4-way Xeon, Symbios 896 on-board SCSI) after initial installation the install kernel panic's (not able to find root filesystem). I have talked to Doug Ledford at Red Hat and he says this is a known problem and was thought to be fixed in a beta version. We have recreated the problem on several Sitka's at Intel using Red Hat 6.0 Gold. ------- Additional Comments From jxh@msi.com 05/10/99 17:19 ------- It seems that something goes wrong in parsing the lilo.conf file. If I use the lilo.conf file installed by default everything works fine. But if I replace the prompt timeout=50 sequence with delay=20 the kernel panics (not able to find root file system). This is on a Dell Inspiron 3200. ------- Additional Comments From dledford@redhat.com 05/13/99 01:54 ------- A new lilo version is now under testing from Werner Almesberger. We will be working with him on this and should have an updated version soon. The test version currently available is lilo-22dev0 and is available from the ftp site ftp://lrcftp.epfl.ch/pub/people/almesber/lilo/lilo-22dev0.tar.gz
The lilo package available in RH 6.1 and on rawhide fixes this problem.