Kerneel compile ends in disaster

[Mellegem]

Hi all, I've been having trouble enabling DMA on my woody box and as a last resort I decided to compile a new kernel. I compiled the kernel, installed the new kernel, ran lilo
and rebooted. On the up side the new 2.4.21 kernel
correctly detects my IDE chipset but on the down side my
system is completely unbootable! My problems start with
Partition check:<slightly abridged>
hda: unknown partition table
hdc: unknown partition table
blah blah
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
Freeing initrd memory: 2732k freed
hda::bad access: block=2, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:0a (hda), sector 2
EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock
hda::bad access: block=2, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:0a (hda), sector 2
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
hda::bad access: block=2, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:0a (hda), sector 2
MINIX-fs: unable to read superblock
hda::bad access: block=2, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:0a (hda), sector 2
FAT-fs: unable to read boot sector
hda::bad access: block=2, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:0a (hda), sector 0
kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:0a

and thats where it stops... by the way I am running a dual
boot with win2k.

OK so I accept I messed up but when I boot with my old
kernel and the output changes to
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
request_module[block-major-3]: Root fs not mounted
VFS: Cannot open root device &quot;hda5&quot; or 03:01
Please append the correct &quot;root=&quot; boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:01

So now by the time I've tried root=/dev/hda1-6, having to
hard reboot every time this is getting really old..
Soooo whippin out my trusty Debian CD I run rescbf24
because after trial and error I've remembered that the
others don't support EXT3 and suprise, suprise I get new
errors:
Freeing unused kernel memory : 280k freed
Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to
kernel

grrrrrrr! I'm not sure what to enter here, I've tried
init=/bin/sh and init=3. All without success. After
googleing abit every solution to my problem or similar has
had to do with a rescue disk >> failed! Can anyone help
please?? I don't think I can face another reinstall, it
takes me about a week to reinstall necessary packages!!

Regards
Wayne Gemmell

 

[kreepykrawler]

Revert to an old kernel, and recompile.

Make sure to include Reiser, EXT2, EXT3 all compiled in. DO NOT USE A MODULES.

You can either put the kernal in / or /boot . Just do the standard compile/install and then call lilo.

I dont know why you're having this much difficulty here. Debian's one of the easiest to make kernels with (other than slack).