[PLUG] Kernel 2.6.24 build on T61

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Wed Feb 6 21:39:46 UTC 2008


I'm trying to do a kernel build for my T61 in order to get the 
(theoretically more) stable wifi driver and generally make it work like I 
would how I would like it to work.

Unfortunately, I get a kernel panic on every build I've tried.  Message 
follows:

BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 6 devices found
VFS: Cannot open root device "sda6" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available 
partitions:
0300	4194302	hda driver:	ide-cdrom
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root ofs on 
unknown-block(0,0)

Now, this seems pretty obvious to me, but the fix has been elusive.

My assumption here is that this is what's going on:  The SATA 
controller driver isn't loading (it's requiring a module or something that 
can't load until the drives are mounted).  Sound reasonable?

It says the only devices available are ide-cdrom, but I'm at a loss as to 
figure out why.

The Debian-built kernel works fine presumably because of the initrd image 
that holes a massive crap-pile of drivers that's loaded before the hard 
disk is mounted.  (By the way, that seems like an amazing piece of magic 
to me.  How the hell do you read the kernel and initrd image from a disk 
controller whose driver you don't have loaded?  But please don't get 
side-tracked by this question, I'm dying to figure out what's going on 
here.

I can attach my .config, if anyone wants to grep it.  But let it suffice 
to say for the moment that I am definitely building the kernel with SATA 
support and all of the intel chipsets related as non-module kernel 
components.

Man, I have math to do.
J.




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