Kernel panic when moving Ubuntu from one system to another

[tom61]

http://tom61.arcadecontrols.com/pics/upc/panic.jpg

"Kernel panic - not syncing - VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)"

I think the HD was on the same channel and is master on the install PC, and on this PC. I've only seen this come up before when I moved a drive from being slave to master, and I'm fairly sure Grub complained first in that case. Ideas?

 

[visaris]

Well, the problem is with the the "root=" kernel parameter:

My grub entry:

title  Gentoo 2005.0 AMD64 (2.6.12-gentoo-r4)
        root (hd0,1)
        kernel /2.6.12-gentoo-r4 root=/dev/sda5 vga=794 udev

If you moved your install to a new system with a different drive order, or a new partitioning scheme, you need to update your "root=" setting. If you tell me all about your disks and partitions, I may be able to tell you what to set your "root=" to.

 

[visaris]

From your image, I see that your boot partition is set to "root (hd0,0)". This is essentially /dev/hda1. But, you also pass this same option to your kernel for the "real" root partition (system partition): "root=/dev/hda1". Either you do not have a separate boot partition, or you probably made a simple mistake. Perhaps change "root=/dev/hda1" to "root=/dev/hda2" or 3, or 4, etc. I don't really know the layout of your drives, so it's hard to tell.

If you fire up a live-cd and give me the output of fdisk's print, and a copy of your /etc/fstab file, I can probably help you.


Edit:

The:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash

lines imply that you do not have a boot partition. That's fine. This also means that your "root=" option looks correct. Go ahead and tell me as much as you can about the system and disks...

 

[tom61]

Only one disc, a Hitachi laptop drive. That's all that is on the system I am trying to get it running on. I'm pretty sure that the BIOS said it was primary master. On the host system, it was plugged into a drive adapter (as this is a notebook drive) then onto the master end of the ATA-66 cable, and a DVD writter was secondary master (which is where I installed from).

If you fire up a live-cd and give me the output of fdisk's print, and a copy of your /etc/fstab file, I can probably help you

Hmm... That will take some work, as the only IDE channel on the system is 44pin. I should be able to use the adapter from installing to the HD plugged into the header, then use a standard CD rom, but it may be awhile before I get everything rigged up.

 

[The_Mage18]

The other possibility is the IDE controller. If the IDE controller is different on the laptop than it was on the desktop you used to install Linux on the drive, you'll get a boot kernel panic as well.