Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs after new kernel compile

Question

So I've been at this for a while and have been poking around for an answer for a few days, and figure it's about time to ask for help. I am running Ubuntu 10.10 in VMWare Fusion, and have downloaded a copy of the 3.2 kernel and built it with all default settings. When I try to boot into the new kernel after a call to make install, I get the following message:

[    1.581916] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
[    1.582260] Pid: 1, comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 3.2.4 #1
[    1.582444] Call Trace:
[    1.582552]  [<ffffffff815e7447>] panic+0x91/0x1a7
[    1.582666]  [<ffffffff815e75c5>] ? printk+0x68/0x6b
[    1.582799]  [<ffffffff81ad2152>] mount_block_root+0x1ea/0x29e
[    1.582929]  [<ffffffff81ad225c>] mount_root+0x56/0x5a
[    1.583047]  [<ffffffff81ad23d0>] prepare_namespace+0x170/0x1a9
[    1.583178]  [<ffffffff81ad16f7>] kernel_init+0x144/0x153
[    1.583304]  [<ffffffff815f45f4>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10
[    1.583436]  [<ffffffff81ad15b3>] ? parse_early_options+0x20/0x20
[    1.583570]  [<ffffffff815f45f0>] ? gs_change+0x13/0x13

Which used to appear on every reboot. I found that if I changed the VM's harddrive type, I could get GRUB to boot at least, but the message above comes up if I try to load the newly compiled kernel. The old kernel works as before. I have checked and I have compiled in support for ext4, which is the fs my root is running. I have also tried generating an initrd file with a call to "sudo update-initramfs -c -k 3.2.4", but to no avail.

The compilation, I think, was pretty standard:

make menuconfig
make
make modules_install
make install
update-grub
reboot

Were the general steps. In terms of options, I basically took the default on everything. In case it's pertinent, my fstab looks like this:

proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
#UUID=c75eddd9-f4fa-49be-927b-8c2da7074135 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
/dev/sda1                                  /               ext4    defaults          0       1
#UUID=5bc6915e-fdfa-479a-885f-ea03cb14f9cd none            swap    sw              0       0                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
/dev/sda5                                  none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

Where I've tried it with both UUID's and /dev/sd* notation. Any help or advice would be much appreciated, as it's gotten quite frustrating.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You forgot to build your initrd that goes with the kernel. Run update-initramfs -c -k kernelversion and then update-grub to find it and add it to the grub menu.

Answer 2

Did you built in all the drivers required to mount the root partition? I mean, the I/O controller driver, the filesystem driver, and so on?

The error means what it means, the kernel is unable to mount the root filesystem.

I don't recall what exactly should unknown block be, but I guess that means it is lacking the I/O controller driver.

Please note that the drivers have to be built into the kernel, modules won't work (as you need to mount the filesystem to get access to the modules).