On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> I decided to give BasicLinux a whirl. I downloaded BASLIN13.ZIP.
> Then I unzipped this file in a special directory I had created for it
> on my DOS partition. Then I read the instructions in README.TXT.
> I found that so far I had done well according to the instructions.
> According to README.TXT my computer far exceeds the system requirements
> for loading BasicLinux. Following the instructions, I then typed "boot"
> and pressed the enter key.
I tried the same thing on my wife's 486DX-66 with 20MB RAM. It
works fine for me.
> "kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:100"
This is very curious. IIRC, it's suggesting that it was
trying to mount / on ide device 1, partition 100, which
couldn't exist... not on a DOS or ext2 file system, at any
rate.
What it should say is,
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
> Then my machine locked up. I gave it the three finger salute and
> re-booted. BTW, this experience did not result in lost clusters and
> other such annoyances. I had Peter Norton to diagnose my disk and he
> said everything was still OK.
Well, you're only dealing with a RAM drive, correct?
If you just ran boot.bat straight from the download, then it
shouldn't even touch your hard drive except to detect that it
exists.
> BTW, the line telling me about the kernel panic appeared immediately after
> a line saying:
>
> "HPFS: hpfs_read_super: not HPFS"
Well this is even curiouser. This is telling you that it was
looking for a "High Performance Filesystem" used in OS/2
(which is read-only in Linux).
> What did I do wrong?
Hmmm... let's see... Ok.
I suspect you have a corrupt BASLINUX.GZ file.
In order to duplicate the error you got, I left out the file
system image by directly running 'loadlin zimage root=/dev/ram0'
In so doing, I got the same errors you mention. You have to
have a file system, and without either an fs or an image, there's
nothing to mount.
The README says enter DOS mode before executing the boot command.
Did you perhaps just do it from a DOS window instead of rebooting
to DOS? You also mention that you downloaded it to your DOS
partition. Do you have any other kinds of partitions?
> P.S. BTW, if I can fix this problem and get this BasicLinux thing working,
> then would it be possible for me to run any Linux versions of Arachne?
Doing it from a RAM drive looks a bit iffy. Probably *possible*
but certainly not a walk in the park.
Create an ext2fs partition on your hard drive, or even from the
DOS partition using UMSDOS and then it's quite possible.
- Steve
