virtualbox - kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:02
2014-07
Can Sürmeli
I'm studying kernel compilation for my operating systems course.
Unfortunately I'm compiling Linux v2.4.20 and Red Hat 9(yes, they're making us use it and it drives me crazy but I've NO CHOICE unfortunately).
I've installed Red Hat 9 virtually with VirtualBox on my MacBook Air and it's the same on the lab except that it's on Ubuntu and both perform fine (well, at least as fine as they can be at this age).
My kernel compiles and boots just fine and performs what's expected from it in the lab but when I'm on my own machine it just compiles fine and can't be booted. When I try to boot it the following error messages appear.
> ds: no socket drivers loaded!
> kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:02
Why does this happen when my setup of Red Hat 9 is the same on both the lab and my machine? Or it isn't the same that I made a mistake during the setup?
And more importantly how can I solve it? I'm really frustrated of this problem after a day of research and a solution would be much appreciated!
Vitamini
I've noticed quite a while ago that compiling a kernel with the parameter -j set to 1 or more doesn't produce a bzImage. Instead, it ends prematurely without any advice. I have reproduced the same behavior in both my netbook and home server.
As far as I'm aware, the point where the compilation stops is random - Compiling twice with the same parameters will probably stop at different files. However, when I run make with no -j* parameter the compilation ends just fine and outputs a working bzImage.
Both machines run Intel Atom (N270 on the netbook and 330 on the server) and I've compiled for these processors. If I recall correctly, I've tried compiling both with Atom and with generic x86_64 options.
The kernel version I'm building is 2.6.34.1
I've always compiled normally with those options in my Core2Duo and Pentium Dual Core machines.
Has anyone experienced this issue? Any ideas why does this happens? Is there a fix or workaround?
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Premature termination of a parallelized make is almost always caused by insufficient specification of dependencies. Unfortunately the only ways to fix it are to either analyze all the dependencies listed in the Makefile, or to pore over the make output looking for the causes of termination.