Re: Blackout kills harddisk - owner pleads for help!

[Graeme Stewart]

> "Mark" == Mark Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Mark> Partition check: hda: hda1 hdb: hdb1 hdb2 hdb3 VFS: Cannot
Mark> open root device 08:01 Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount
Mark> root fs on 08:01

Your floppy is trying to boot from the device with major number 8,
minor number 1. This is sda1, the first SCSI disk, first
partition. Try telling your floppy to boot linux from hda1:

LILO Boot: linux root=/dev/hda1

That should do the trick. If your floppy isn't using LILO you should
be able to use the debian boot disk instead.

More long term, there must be a problem with LILO on your system. Once
you get it up from a floppy have a look at /etc/lilo.conf. You should
have something along the lines of...

boot=/dev/hda1
root=/dev/hda1
compact
install=/boot/boot.b
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
delay=20
image=/vmlinuz
label=Linux
read-only

However, the problem you described (`LI' and nothing else) I have seen
when the master boot record doesn't seem to hand off properly to lilo
on /dev/hda1. My fix was to use `boot=/dev/hda', and install lilo on
the MBR, instead of the first sector of the partition. Remember to run
lilo after editing lilo.conf.

Hope that helps,
Graeme

PS. You can find out the major and minor numbers of a device with 
`ls -l' in /dev, e.g.

abulafia$ ls -l /dev/sda*
brw-rw   1 root disk   8,   0 Dec 31  1969 sda
brw-rw   1 root disk   8,   1 Dec 31  1969 sda1
...

you can find out the device associated with a major number by
greping...

abulafia$ ls -l /dev | grep "8,"
brw-rw   1 root disk   8,   0 Dec 31  1969 sda
brw-rw   1 root disk   8,   1 Dec 31  1969 sda1
...

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Re: Blackout kills harddisk - owner pleads for help!

[Mark Phillips]

Dear Dr Debian,

I woke up this morning to discover that there had been a blackout.  My
computer had tried to reboot but couldn't even get a LILO prompt.
Actually, that's not completely true, it did manage to get half a
LILO prompt (it printed "LI") and then hung.  I tried rebooting again
a couple of times and the same thing happened.

My next strategy was to use my floppy boot disk.  It complained with:

Partition check:
   hda: hda1
   hdb: hdb1 hdb2 hdb3
VFS: Cannot open root device 08:01
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:01

Then it hung.  I would greatly appreciate suggestions on what I should
do.

Thanks in advance,

Mark Phillips.

P.S. I should explain that hda1 is an 850 M hard drive which contains
my debian system.  hdb1 is a dos partition.  hdb2 is my swap
partition. hdb3 is a spare ext2 partition I use for storing bits and
pieces (ie not part of the main structure).


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