Upgrade to kernel 2.6.11 failure

[John Wendel]

Frank Chen wrote:
> I built the kernel 2.6.11.10 on my machine and add it
> to my FC3 boot menu. When booting the new kernel, I
> got this kernel panic:
> VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
> Any idea what I did wrong?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Frank

Sounds like a problem with the initial ramdisk. Sense you said you had 
to add the new kernel to the boot menu, I deduce that you didn't do the 
install properly (or you forgot ramdisk support in the kernel config).

Remember that you need ramdisk and initial ramdisk support in the new 
kernel. I learned this the hard way!

I just built 2.6.11.10 with the following procedure:

[1] download linux-2.6.11.tar.bz2 and patch-2.6.11.10.bz2

[2] tar --bzip -xf linux-2.6.11.tar.bz2

[3] bunzip2 patch-2.6.11.10.bz2

[4] mv patch-2.6.11.10 linux-2.6.11

[5] cd linux-2.6.11

[6] make mrproper

Tradition!

[7] patch -p1 < patch-2.6.11.10

[8] cp /root/config.2.6.11 .config

Where I keep my config file. Yours is probably somewhere else.

[9] make oldconfig

You can replace [8,9] with make menuconfig or your favorite variation if 
you don't already have a saved config file.

[A] make

[B] make modules_install

Gotta do this before "make install".

[C] make install

[D] reboot

You don't have to add anything to grub.conf, "make install" did it 
already. And it installed the initial ramdisk.

I usually edit grub.conf to remove the previous kernel, just keeping the 
new one and the latest Fedora kernel in case something is broken in the 
new one.

Hope this helps.

John