<---newbie.........anyone familiar w/ zipslack ???

Dyers · #1 June 22nd, 2004, 07:03 PM

trying to join the revolution......but i'm stuck. never done anything w/ linux before so i want to get a taste of it. Currently running win98 and am trying to setup zipslack also. I'm stuck at the part where i point to the partition in the Linux.bat file. It's on the same partition as everything else. just cant figure the root=/dev/xxxx part out. Under the linux.bat, theres rem's giving suggestions and i've tried em all to no avail. How do i find this out ??? any help is appreciated and i can post more info if needed.

Thank You

Dyers · #2 June 22nd, 2004, 07:47 PM

hmmm, i may have figured the prob out........I unzipped it to C:\zipslack , and i think i shoulda unzipped it to C:\linux. I tried to delete it so i could start over(from the dos window).........but doesnt seem to want to cooperate. Do i have to restart is dos to be able to delete the dir. It's been awhile since i played around in dos.

Dyers · #3 June 22nd, 2004, 08:34 PM

ok, I'm past all that. Got it to start setting up, and everything was goin nicely until it all came to a halt w/ this................

Warning: unable to open initial console

Kernel Panic : No init found Try passing init=option to kernel

I'll keep searching for the answer..........

Trillian · #4 June 23rd, 2004, 07:52 PM

Q: <b>Why does the boot process stop with this "Kernel panic" error?

VFS: Cannot open root device 08:04
Kernel panic: VFS : Unable to mount root fs on 08:04

</b>

Well, you see, device 08:04 is the fourth partition on a SCSI drive (/dev/sda4). In most machines these days, there are no SCSI devices, only IDE ones. (NOTE: the parallel-port version of the Zip drive *is* treated as a SCSI device by Linux)

What you need to do is edit the LINUX.BAT file and change the uncommented loadlin line (without the 'rem') to boot the partition where you installed Linux. This is probably something like /dev/hda1 if you used your C: drive.

If you have no idea what the partition is, look right before it stops and you'll see something like:

hda: hda1 hda2 hda3

In this case, the partition must be one of: /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, /dev/hda3.

FAQ@slack.org.

Dyers · #5 June 24th, 2004, 10:25 AM

yeah, i figured that part out........thats how i got to the kernel panic.
I changed my Linux.bat and then i typed : Loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 rw and it began to unpack and set everything up, then all of a sudden it froze. giving me the warning and the kernel panic.