03:01 is the identifier (major and minor number) of /dev/hda1, the first
partition on your first IDE drive. The message means that the kernel cannot
mount this partition as the Linux root (/) filesystem.
Why? Hard to tell. Watch the earlier messages that the kernel displays
during boot and see if it lists drive hda and partition hda1 as found. Boot
with a rescue disk -- the kind that creates a RAM disk as the root, not the
kind that boots your hard-drive root -- and fsck the troublesome partition.
I'm assuming the system boots from the hard disk (hda, the first IDE drive).
If I'm wrong -- if your boot device is a floppy, say -- you need to make
sure that the drive is present and working.
I'm also assuming that /dev/hda1 is *supposed* to be your filesystem root --
if not, you may have accidentally changed lilo.conf and re-run lilo to
create an incorrect set of default boot instructions. In this case, press
TAB at the LILO: prompt to see if you have other boot choices than the default.
Beyond that, I can only suggest that you watch closely all the messages that
precede the failure for hints about what is going on.
PS - did that "whole lot of other stuff" you refer to really come *before*
the kernel panic message, not *after* it? I can't create kernel panics on
demand to check my recollection, but this all looks like part of the
diagnostic dump that normally follows a kernel panic.
At 08:33 PM 12/9/99 +0200, TAG wrote:
>I have a problem - I have no explanation as to how it got started, but when
>I went to turn it on this morning - it came up with this:
>
>Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:01
>
>there was a whole lot of other stuff before - that looks like:
>
>[MS-DOS FS Rel. 12 FAT ,check=n,conv=b,uid=0,gid=0,umask=022,bmap]
>
>[me=0x0,cs=0,#f=0,fs=0,fl=0,ds=0,dl=0,data=0,se=0,ts=0,ls=0,rc=0,fc=42949672
>95]
>
>and repeated 3 times??
>I am runninr RH6,1 - with Kernel 2.2.13 compiled - it has been running
>beautifully for weeks!!
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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