Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount block (1,3)

Burned the ISO... restarted comp... hit enter at boot screen.. shows 2 little penguins.. then it shows

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



Any suggestions-ideas?


Chad

Google has a very large number of hits if you type that whole message down to the first parenthesis, in quotes, and hit search. Don't include the block numbers.

I am new here, so if you have a long history, I am not aware of it. Did you install Knoppix to HD? That block information indicates, um, hda4, I think, though that minus 1 is always confusing to me. Live Cd would not normally look for the kernel fs on HD.

Anything which causes loader to be unable to find root fs will give this message, which varies by the numbers for locations.

I was installing Knoppix and had the same message. When I looked at Grub.conf after all my hair was pulled out :) I realized I had typed for Grub.conf

title knoppix
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12 root=/dev/hda6
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12

Sigh. Note that this error is self-obvious for the alert folks. the (hd0,6) is call out for hda7, since that number starts at 0, not 1. But, the /dev/hda6 should be /dev/hda7, of course. See my comment about this different number system confusing me.

I got message almost same as yours, except unknown block (?,3) had a different number of ? Changing 6 to 7 fixed it.

On google, there are many other causes for this failure. My experience has been first look for easy errors. :)

hello i had the same thing when i installed mine last week. what you have to do is reinstall and go with the first one it needs debain. i no linger get the panic. but i have not been able to get my modem to work.