x86 system won't find valid root device at startup

[lynnzimmerman]

Hi, I got an old laptop from 2008 Aspire 5100 with only 1GB RAM sharing on VRAM, so I decided to give gentoo a try and have encountered the same problem after my fourth kernel compile, at first I thought I missed the hdd drives on the kernel config and redo everything from scratch following the Handbook:X86, after checking various forums post on gentoo I considered the genkernel initramfs to be the issue since after the second and third kernel compiles the initramfs was made too fast didn't use the -clean option to make them but was used to recompile the kernel with some changes.

That's why I decided to use dracut to make the initramfs on my last attempt but got the same error but with dracut output: [Block device 803 is not a valid root device] but also got the same or similar error: dracut: FATAL: Don't know how to handle 'root=803'

Formatted the disk on 4 partitions using cfdisk and minimal CD, and formatted them with mkfs.ext4 command.

[Hu]

root=803 is very unusual, and most likely wrong. You probably want root=/dev/sda3 instead. The major/minor numbers for sda3 would be 8/3, but the root= line is normally given the dev path, not the device numbers. There are other, more intricate root= options that we might need to explore eventually, but for a single drive laptop, this should be fine.

I appreciate your dedication to researching this before asking for help, but I should warn that 11+ year old commentary about filesystem features is likely obsolete by now. Your tests were harmless, but you were likely testing for problems that have not applied to anyone for several years.

[lynnzimmerman]

Indeed after checking why lilo was using root=803 instead of /dev/sda3 checked more documentation about it, and learned that can be specified on append "root=UUID=63c65e13-8739-4ead-9591-05d47a70edbe" I guess normal /dev/sda3 could work as well.

I'm using lilo instead of GRUB2 since I currently use slackware distro and I'm more familiar with it, I haven't considered checking more of lilo since the append isn't necessary on slackware it reads directly from lilo.conf on root=/dev/sdax and before trying gentoo, slackware 14.2 x86 was installed on the same laptop. Thanks for your help Hu at least it booted the HDD and I'm able to continue testing gentoo.

[NeddySeagoon]

lynnzimmerman,

root=803 should work. I had occasion to use something similar recently, on kernel 5.12 but you really really don't want to know why :)
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[GDH-gentoo]

The kernel does understand root=803:

init/do_mounts.c

[NeddySeagoon]

GDH-gentoo,

Thank you, I missed that.
That's a dracut bug then :)
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[lynnzimmerman]

Just to close and clarify this issue: When I first booted the first time I got a Kernel panic but the issue was I didn't used GRUB2 like the majority, that's why after checking what could it be I created the initramfs but got the error:

generated with: genkernel --install --kernel-config=/usr/src/linux/mykernel.config initramfs

[GDH-gentoo]

[pietinger]

[Jaglover]

Last time I tried Lilo it wouldn't accept PARTUUID as a valid kernel command line option. Not sure how much development Lilo gets nowadays, perhaps it is fixed by now.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

[GDH-gentoo]

[pietinger]