[SWLUG] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3, 8)

[Dave Cridland]

On Wed Apr 05 22:18:41 2006, Julian Hall wrote:
> Neil Greenwood wrote:
>> If you're trying to fix the Linux installation, I wouldn't mount 
>> the Windows partitions, just in case :-)
>> 
>> Is /dev/hda2 the root partition that's broken? Can you remember 
>> what file system is on there?
> Hi Neil,
> 
> hda10 has ext2, it's my /home partition
> hda8 I'm pretty sure is where my root partition is, but the fstype 
> says "minix".  Is that some sort of ramdisk?  If so then I suspect 
> the actual hda8 is hosed.

3, 8 is hda8, I think. Minix is the Minix filesystem, which used to 
occasionally be used on floppies, because it's more space efficient 
than ext2, and in very early Linux systems, on the hard disk (because 
Minix itself was the development platform for early Linux).

Unless you actually are using minix, which is pretty unlikely, you 
might want to try simply changing the partition type, although if the 
partition table has been mucked about with, you may find this is all 
turning into a bit of a lost cause.



>> You might be able to find out using fdisk with the -l (lower-case 
>> L) option, on the whole disk (not the hda2 partition), like so:
>>   fdisk -l /dev/hda
> Thanks, I did that and that's how I found out the minix thing.
>> You do have a backup, don't you ;-)
> Erm.  Yes.  Erm.  Thing is it's a ghost image.  Not sure how old.  
> I'll try looking at the partitions with Partition Magic and see 
> what that says - probably a lot of stuff involving the top row of 
> keys and shift ;)

If /home is intact, you've not lost a great deal anyway. Just don't 
reformat that when you reinstall. :-)

Dave.
-- 
           You see things; and you say "Why?"
   But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
    - George Bernard Shaw