the kernal's panicing..

and so am i.

[benihana]

ok so i finally took the plunge and decided to install linux. i had mandrake 9 on cd from a magazine so this seemed a good place to start.

I tried t set up a partition on my w2k machine with partition magic but it got to about 30% through the process and hung for hours - i had no choice but to power off, and unsurprisingly got a blue screen error. unpeturbed i thought im gonna have to reinstall windows so i might as well start a fresh with linux, and maybe banish M$ for ever ;)

now when i try to install linux i get a the following error:

kernal panic: vfs: unable to mount root fs on 01.03

ive tried reading around but get the impression there could be many causes for this kind of error.

any suggestions for the next step?

thanks

[dingman]

The error message means that the kernel was looking for the root file system (the one everything else is mounted in, and where most of the OS lives.) on a device with (I think) major number 3 and minor number 1. That would be the 1st partition on the primary master IDE hard drive. (I think that's universal. I don't know the innards of the IDE driver nearly well enough to be certain, though.) Apparently, whatever file system it found there is either not a Linux file system or has been damaged beyond the kernel's ability to cope.

If you have any important data on the hard drive, it might be worth a try to start up using a bootable rescue disk and see what you can salvage. If you're lucky, fsck might be able to restore the partition to a usable state, or at least close enough to go dig out the survivors. (knoppix might be good for this - I've used to to rescue data of hard drives that were physically failing and couldn't be mounted from Windows anymore.) If you didn't have any important data on the drive, I'd go ahead and re-install.

As a side note, every time I've had a Linux installation fail partway through, it's been a Mandrake installation. If you're not attached to it for some reason, I might therefore reccomend picking something else.

[benihana]

thanks for your input.
im not particuarly attatched to any linux really - apart from the odd chmod on the hosting server at work ive not had anything to do with it, but being on a dial up it looks like im stuck with the mandrake cd for now.

theres not really any data i cant live without so i think im gonna try a clean windows install (probably cant cope without photoshop anyway), and then try partition magic again.

<crossing fingers ;)>

[dingman]

Good luck. If Photoshop is a big app for you, deffinitely look into The GIMP. It does well more than I know what to do with, and I've read a number of people who presumably know what they are talking about who claim that it's every bit as good as Photoshop. They are different enough that I can't accomplish anything at all in photoshop, even though I've acquired a few narrow skills in Gimp.

[benihana]

cheers dingman.
ive heard mixed reviews on the gimp from various sources - will definately be checking it out when i get the machine sorted.