Backtrack Lilo Issue: Append proper "root="

[Reznik Akime]

I've found several topics on the issue but none of them have a resolution. After solving my the booting issue from my laptop drive thats in a ATA6 to USB converter, I can get Backtrack to boot from that device in VMware after installing it from the live cd in VMWare or from booting directly from the CD, but when it comes time to boot from that drive it says something along the lines that I need to append a correct "root=" and that it can't access root.

The most likely cause is that when its booting the HDD is given a different identifier than what it was when installed to from the live CD, but I can't figure out for the life of me what it would be set to in the bios. It calls it USB-HDD0 in the bios but I dunno how to translate that to lilo lingo.

[ARC1450]

It's probably /dev/sda1 or /dev/hda1 (depending on the kernel you use).

Could you post up your lilo.conf?

[Reznik Akime]

It's probably /dev/sda1 or /dev/hda1 (depending on the kernel you use).

Could you post up your lilo.conf?

Yep, one quick second. I know it tries to assign it sda1 but im not sure if thats what its registered as when it boots from the bios. Ive tried changing the drive to hda and that didn't work either. If you can wait just a bit longer I can provide a screenshot of the full error along with the lilo.conf.

[Reznik Akime]

boot = /dev/sda
prompt
timeout = 60
#bitmap=/boot/splash.bmp
change-rules
reset
#vga = 769,771/773/792
vga = 769
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = current
label = backtrack
read-only

That about sums it up. Boots up right fine in VM ware but from a cold boot it it gives this.

VFS: Cannot open root device"Volume00/LogVol00" or 00:00
Please append a correct "root "boot option
Kernel panic:VFS:Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

Its similar too but not quite that. The 00:00s are replaced with (8,1) or (8,0)s.

[Reznik Akime]

Nobody has any idea?

[Reznik Akime]

Nearing my wits end here on this seemingly simple issue. Doing a bit of deeper research into it, im going to assume that its a compiled driver issue within the kernel. If that don't make sense, don't be surprised. Seems something could be missing within the kernel for my chipset.

How in the hell would I go about fixing that? Im not lying when I say im a linux newbie but by damned I want to learn.

And Ive already tried unbuntu. Didn't care for it.

[kiikkuja]

Maybe you should try Gentoo or Arch Linux then!! I'm using 64-bit Ubuntu myself
but seeing you don't care for that i recomend trying each of those distros.

BUT be warned that those two have pretty steep learning curve so they aren't exactly Linux noob friendly but if you want to control everything and have the programs you want with perhaps best performance Linux has to offer then i'd suggest them.

But if you want something easier and maybe more windows-like there is sabayon, pclinuxos, mandriva, suse, mepis to name a few.

[Gogeta]

In your lilo.conf file you might try using specific partitions instead of pointing to the entire disk with the "root=" option. What kernel version are you running? USB devices are usually emulated as SCSI by the kernel so it will be /dev/sda#. Is your boot image on the same partition as root or separate?

I'd try Arch before Gentoo, but that's my opinion. I learned more about Unix/Linux by simply installing/configuring Arch then I had learned in using Ubuntu for close to a year. I know Gentoo has a similar installation procedure but the Arch community is hard to beat. I've found PCLinuxOS to be a nice transition OS from Windows to Linux if you're not a fan of Ubuntu's desktop variant. A few of my friends have been swayed from the dark side to PCLOS by yours truly and they're happy with the change.

[rcofell]

I guess I use GRUB for my bootloader, but lilo isn't too hard to understand either.

Have you tried booting from the livecd and checking what the drive is mapped as? Try running "dmesg | grep [sh]d" at a terminal prompt to give a listing of all the hard drives and other block devices the kernel detected at bootup. Then use cfdisk /dev/<device name> to get the partition listing so you can try to figure out which one the root partition is.

As suggested above you could try either Arch or Gentoo :)
Arch would be easier to setup and run, I find the package manager(Pacman) and user repository(AUR) to be handy. Yaourt makes a great frontend for Pacman that takes advantage of the AUR.
Lately I've been venturing into Gentoo. If you enjoy the idea of greater configuration power and a package manager that compiles everything from source then go with that, just be prepared for the compile times... There's also a lot of resources available like the Gentoo-wiki.

[billdavis]

did you ever get it figured out??

[m411b]

root = /dev/sda1