Hello everyone,

I am fairly new to linux in general. Had my laptop dual booting vista and Fedora10 for a few weeks. I decided that I wanted to try slackware, so I downloaded the install DVD for 12.2 and tried to install it in place of fedora10.

I went through the whole install process and it told me to ctrl-alt-delete to reboot. So I did that and during booting up I get to a point in the script where it says:

VFS: Cannont open root device "fd00" or unknown-block(253,0)
please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
0300 4194302 hda driver: ide-cdrom
0800 312571224 sda driver: sd
0801 217542652 sda1
0802 200812 sda2
0803 94823662 sda3
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(253,0)

Can anyone give me any guidance on what to do to fix this problem?

I appreciate your time and help

Shane

Did you make an initrd for your kernel? Sounds to me like the kernel doesn't have the necessary modules to mount the root filesystem, so it's falling over. Boot your system using the Slackware install DVD (read the bit about booting your system in a pinch when the DVD's booted), then follow the instructions in /boot/README.initrd on the partition you installed to.

I'm re-booting with the DVD right now. I'll let ya know what develops.

Thank you!

Hello msc8127,

As you informed that you are a Linux newbie, I can only recommend that you read the documentation:

- README.TXT (also available on the DVD)
- CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT (also available on the DVD)
- The Slackbook (the reference for Slackware newbies and the others)
- LQ Slackware-Links (various links)

You need to understand that Slackware requires some manual configuration to work satisfactorily.

Do not expect everything to work seamlessly just after the setup and the first reboot.

Thanks for the replies folks.

I went ahead and went back to fedora for now until I get better at understanding how linux works in general. I'll keep reading and trying to learn things better and give slackware another try a little further down the road.

Hi,

Not to slam another distro but if you want to learn 'Slackware' then you should take that leap. Your not going to learn that much from 'fedora' that you couldn't learn from 'Slackware'. In fact you will learn a lot with Slackware. You could dual boot your system with the OS of choice then switch to the alternate OS when needed.

It sounds to me like LILO wasn't set up properly when you were installing, and it's not finding the partitions. The kernel panic is probably because it's looking for a kernel on a partition that doesn't exist. I wouldn't get bogged down with making an initrd just yet if you're a beginner.

Is there anything you didn't understand when you were installing the LILO boot loader? You would need to use the expert mode to set it up for multiple partitions. Have one more go at installing it, explain step by step what you did to set up LILO, and I'll try my best to help.

I know Slackware is not by most people's definition an easy operating system to set up, but I've always found installation almost trouble free.

i think you are giving up way to early. i also just downloaded slack 12.2 and decided to take the plunge.its very hard but also very rewarding.so please try. as i have been told over 5 times is to RTFM and if that doesn't work Google it. I really want to become a pentester so i will learn everything if i have to.

Sometimes "RTFM" isn't the best advice around. Understanding the layout of man pages, and dealing with the very out of date "Slackbook" is difficult for beginners. Slackware's website says that they are working on updating the "Slackbook", so I hope they can make Slackware more friendly for newcomers. I would never expect them to "dumb down" the operating system itself, though I was a little surprised with the Slackware LILO logo, but they really need to make the documentation more newbie friendly.

I truly believe that Slackware is the best starting point for Linux newbies (like me), and then if it really is too difficult, then go elsewhere. If they can improve the Slackbook, less newcomers will be forced to go elsewhere. In the meantime, I think we need to help newcomers as much as possible to learn things "the Slack way", as it's such a rewarding operating system to use.

My first impressions of Slackware 12.2 is that it is getting a lot more user-friendly than 12.0, simply from having more up-to-date libraries. I wonder what will happen with v13.0. I hope they don't move to using exclusively KDE4, as I'm not keen on it from a visual point of view. I'll probably try and stick with KDE3 for as long as possible, and just get the newer qt libraries if I need them.