[NTLUG:Discuss] GRUB Configuration Assistance

[Jack Snodgrass]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003 21:00:14 -0600, Dennis Rice wrote:

> I am setting up a testbed system with multiple versions of Linux on it. 
> The first install was Red Hat V8.0 where I elected to use GRUB.  This is
> installed on a 10 G drive.  I installed a second 80 G drive and
> partitioned it to hold 7 different versions.
> 
> On first attempts to update GRUB (/boot/grub), have learned alot, but
> not working properly.  Grub points to the correct partition and starts
> to load, but the first install (RH 7.3) starts to boot and then has a
> Panic Error.
> 
> Have read the info page, but I think there is information missing that I
> need to make it work right.  Would appreciate some guidance.
> 
> Dennis Rice
> dearroz at attbi.com

 A kernel panic at boot time generally means that the 
root partition is not getting loaded correctly. You should
have a root= parameter in your /boot/grub/grub.conf file 
that should point to your root partition. The /etc/fstab 
file ( on your root partition ) should have the correct 
root partition info. 

   Another possibility is that your root partition is something
other than ext2 and your kernel can't handle that without loading
a module. That's where the initrd stuff comes into play. Say that 
you needed a scsi module loaded in order to read your SCSI disk. 
You can't read the module from the /lib/modules directory on the 
disk... because you don't have the module loaded that will let you
load the module. ;) That's probably not what's going on with you,
but if you have a non-ext2 root partition, you may want to look
at that more closely. 

jack