Boot Error

[candid357]

I have read, and went back and re burned my knoppix from 8x to 4x, I'm still getting this when I try to boot from the cd:

(in red text) ERROR: CANNOT UNITE READ-ONLY MEDIA AND INITIAL RAMDISK! (in gray text) Shutdown: hda system halted

(in green text) >>read-only CD system successfully merged with read-write/ramdisk

(in gray text) /linuxrc:cannot create /var/run/utmp:directory nonexistent No filesystem could mount root, tried reiserfs
ext3 ext2 msdos vfat iso9660 fuseblk

kernel panic - not syncing : VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown block (1,3)

I don't really know what that means but I thought it would be helpful to have the whole thing.

[Harry Kuhman]

I have read, and went back and re burned my knoppix from 8x to 4x,
Did you also confirm the md5 checksum of the ISO file?

If so, try knoppix nodma at boot. Posting system specs may help also.

[candid357]

I did confirm the md5 and everythign was right, I will try knoppix nodma.

As for system specs, I ahve 2 gigs of ram, at 2.79 Ghz, and a 250gig hd, Processor is intel pentium D
sadly it is running vista (upgrading from xp was the worst decision ever...)

[Harry Kuhman]

upgrading from xp was the worst decision ever...
I'm pretty sure that Vista is not an upgrade. Cute that they retired your XP serial number so that you can't officially go back, isn't it?

As far as specs, I was thinking more like the exact make and model of the motherboard, type of drives and other information that mught help someone spot a particular known problem. But at this point give the suggested cheat code a try.

[darkblue]

Hi,

I had the same problem - but the solution was simple:
cleaning the knoppix-disc :wink:


cu

Darkblue

[kittybriton]

I have a problem booting from CDR (burned at home):

I hit return to start the boot process (or enter lang=us)
The boot process gets as far as the following error message:
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03
and everything stops. I have to reboot (Windows or Knoppix)

Can anybody help? (I should clarify that I am not terribly geeky).

[Capricorny]

kittybriton: Have you tried the CD in different computers? If it won't boot anywhere, it's probably the CD. I assume you use 5.1.1 - otherwise I would suggest you try upgrading to that version.

[kittybriton]

Thanks for the suggestion, Capricorny.

The computer I most need this to work with is an HP Pavilion with 20GB hard disk and 63MB RAM, but am also trying it on a Compaq Presario with 80GB hard disk and 512MB RAM.

After creating another disk, and running the options suggested in the FAQs, these are the results.

I hope these will be meaningful to somebody:

boot: Knoppix vga=0

Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03
System hangs, caps lock and scroll lock lights flash.

boot: Knoppix acpi=off pnpbios=off noapic noapm

You passed an undefined node number. Press <RETURN> to see video modes available, <SPACE> to continue or wait 30 seconds.
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03
System hangs, caps lock and scroll lock lights flash.

boot: Knoppix vga=0 debug -b 3
-- Quite a screenful of info. Most of which seems to be identifying various components of the systems used, hopefully, the following part is the most meaningful:

libata version 1.02 loaded
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2
initializing crytographic api
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4 Kbytes
TCP: hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
Freeing init rd memory: 781K freed
FAT: bogus logical sector size 24234
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03
System hangs, caps lock and scroll lock lights flash.

boot: failsafe debug -b 3

libata version 1.02 loaded
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2
initializing crytographic api
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4 Kbytes
TCP: hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
Freeing init rd memory: 781K freed
FAT: bogus logical sector size 24234
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03
System hangs, caps lock and scroll lock lights flash.

[ckamin]

kittybriton,

63MB RAM? Might want to start looking there. You might have some trouble getting most live disks to run a GUI on that little. You can try other boot options (cheat codes) to boot into a command line interface. Bad media could also be a concern as well as burning the diak at too fast a speed. Some older optical drives also have issues reading some writable media. You might have received more replies if you had started a new thread of your own on your concern, rather than tack it onto an ongoing thread.

[cbagger01]

kittybriton,

63MB RAM? Might want to start looking there. You might have some trouble getting most live disks to run a GUI on that little. You can try other boot options (cheat codes) to boot into a command line interface. Bad media could also be a concern as well as burning the diak at too fast a speed. Some older optical drives also have issues reading some writable media. You might have received more replies if you had started a new thread of your own on your concern, rather than tack it onto an ongoing thread.

Try booting with


failsafe mem=512M

where "512" is the amount of memory in your computer. Make sure that the "mem" is lowercase and the "M" at the end is an uppercase letter.

[kittybriton]

This is very frustrating. No matter what I try, I get the same error.

For what it's worth, when I boot failsafe with any of the other cheat codes, I get the same list of messages as cited previously before the computer hangs.

[Capricorny]

This is very frustrating. No matter what I try, I get the same error.

For what it's worth, when I boot failsafe with any of the other cheat codes, I get the same list of messages as cited previously before the computer hangs.
Have you got the CD/DVD to boot with other machines? I doubt the potential memory problem is the reason here, X - the real memory hog - is only started much later in any case.

[kittybriton]

The thing that's worrying me is that I get the same error message / result on both the machines I have tried so far.

Does "Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03" mean that it is unable to mount one of the drives?
if so, how do identify which drive? and how do I remedy the problem?

[OErjan]

i have seen similar errors on disks burned too fast or on marginal media (bad CD or DVD). try burning as slow as you can and try using quality media.

[Capricorny]

The thing that's worrying me is that I get the same error message / result on both the machines I have tried so far.

Does "Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 01:03" mean that it is unable to mount one of the drives?
if so, how do identify which drive? and how do I remedy the problem?
I don't think so - but I'm no expert on this. Because Knoppix is set up to run with exclusively read-only media, any intrinsic mounting by the kernel must be on virtual structures, like RAM-disks. Physical writable media is not mounted at boot time. This panic might mean (among other things) memory read/write errors, but as you get the same on two different machines, I suspect, as Oerjan also indicates, that it is your booting disk, CD/DVD media errors, or bad image to burn. Did you check the md5sum of the image, and if that is correct and booting still fails, could you try other burners? The ISO image of the CD is easily transferred on a 1GB pendrive.