Installing grub for a different computer
Kevin Freeman
kfreem02 at comcast.net
Wed Nov 17 20:27:04 UTC 2004
On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 07:15 +0000, Colin Paul Adams wrote:
> assumptions, assumptions....
> NOW Murphy is kicking good and proper. Here are the last few messages
> from the console:
>
> Mounting root filesystem.
> EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock
> mount: error 22 mounting ext3
> pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
> umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
> Freeing unused kernel memory: 168k freed
> Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.
>
Looking at the bright side, at least the kernel was loaded from
the /boot partition. ;)
I can think of 3 likely causes:
1) root parameter on kernel line is pointing to the wrong partition
2) initrd points to a different version than the kernel version
3) your / partition is at least partially corrupt
> I tried the above with two different kernels (there's 4 or 5 installed
> - all FC1).
> Now, I mentioned before that I was able to mount the root file system on my
> other computer OK, so I'm rather puzzled by the failure to find the
> superblock.
>
> Is there anything I can do at this stage?
Try modifying the root= parameter of grub's kernel config. If you did a
stock FC1 install, try root=LABEL=/. Otherwise, just try root=/dev/hda1
through root=/dev/hda5. One of them has to work! This should not cause
any harm to the drive since nothing will be mounted read/write until
your / partition is properly specified.
If this still does not work, you might try Toms root/boot:
http://www.toms.net/rb/
This floppy contains fdisk, vi, etc. and will allow you to explore the
drive to locate the / partition and edit /boot/grub/grub.conf. While
there, also verify that /boot/grub/menu.lst links
to /boot/grub/grub.conf.
Kevin Freeman
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list