On Thursday 21 January 2010 20:08:53 Valmor de Almeida wrote: > Hello, > > I am trying to boot gentoo from an external USB HDD. I am getting the > error message: > > VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3" or unknown-block(2,0) > Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available > partitions: > Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on > unknown-block(2,0)
This almost always means that you don't have a required module compiled into the kernel and are not using an initrd. Common modules are the motherboard chipset and the fs on the disk > > I am assuming that the device will be named /dev/sda since there is no > other HDD on the system. The message above does not list any available > partitions. > Any thoughts? > > Here is the info from fdisk on this drive (it is a new 4096-byte sector > drive): > > Disk /dev/sdb: 240.1 GB, 240057409536 > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 29185 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > Disk identifier: 0x0c7786a9 > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/sdb1 * 1 26 208813+ 83 Linux > /dev/sdb2 27 158 1060290 82 Linux > swap / Solaris > /dev/sdb3 159 2117 15735667+ 83 Linux > /dev/sdb4 2118 29185 217423710 8e Linux LVM > > Thanks, > > -- > Valmor > -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
