Kernal panic error -- won't boot! Please help..

[user unknown]

I'm not sure about the initrd, but I don't have one, and asked in another thread, what it's for (less than one month ago)
I've forgotten the answer, but you might find it by searching for 'initrd'.
Of course you have to remove the initrd - lines from your /etc/lilo.conf.

[ChillyWilly]

I get the same kernal panic problem no matter which kernal I try to boot into (basically, I can't get a working LinuxOS going, whether it's "Linux", "Linux2.4" or "Linux2.6". The initrd thing may be something, because I get the following message when I try to run mkfs.ext3:

mkfs.ext3: Device size reported to be zero. Invalid partition specified, or
partition table wasn't reread after funning fdisk, due to
a modified partition being busy and in use. You may need to reboot
to re-read your partition table.

When I try mkfs.reiserfs, I get this:

reiserfs_create: can not create that small (0 blocks) filesystem

When I try to mount hda3, I get the same message that I got when I tried to mount WinXP, mainly

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda3

As for editing (or deleting) initrd, I can't get to it because I can't mount the drive..

Should I simply start all over again with my partitions (i.e., go back into WindowsXP and use PartitionMagic, delete all partitions, and start again)? I must have tried to install this thing more than 15 times now, and it's getting really frustrating.

[ChillyWilly]

Ok -- I've gone and re-partitioned my drive (it's now in correct order, and starts with hda2 after main), re-installed Knoppix and... still the same. It was nothing to do my partitions after all. The error message I still get is:

mount: fs type devfs not supported by kernal

I've scanned other posts and checked for bug reports, and it doesn't seem like anyone else is getting this... What could possibly be the problem!? I'm just about ready to give up, and go back to (sigh) Linspire. But I'd really like to get all the packages offered by Knoppix as well as the flexibility.. Anyone else out there with this problem???[/quote]

[user unknown]

You had a partition of size 0 before, and now again?

You needend try to mount a filesystem, which wasn't created - of course that will fail.

do

fdisk /dev/hda
p
q

and report the results.

It will show partitions, size, and the filesystemtype to be used with that partition.