Hi, Mark! Problems solved, thanks!
I found what happened to lead to the problem was - I changed the hard disk from secondary master to primary master, lilo was looking for '/' in /dev/hdc5, rather /dev/hda5. From your tips, I first tried to put 'rescue root=/dev/hda5' at the boot prompt when the rescue disk was loaded. Then typed in the root password to doo the maintenance jobs. But the system did not allow me to edit any files at all. It was still looking for /dev/hdc5 and /dev/hdc6 (swap partition). So, I used the rescue disk and the root disk to mount the '/' fs and edit the /etc/lilo.conf, fstab and mtab where all hdc were changed to hda. And this time, it worked! Thank you very for deciphering the meaning of the numbers in the error message so that I understand what was the problem and find the right direction to fix it. Best regards, Wilson : ) Mark Suter wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Wilson, > > > Yes, thank you for reminding me the missing bits (The machine with broken > > O/S is > > not with me at the moment, I'm sorry that I have not jotted them down > > properly). > > Now, presuming what you said is right and once I've checked out the > > number,x > > in the error message "VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 3:0x". What command > > should I do to fix the problem and get the O/S back to live? > > The basic procedure to fix most boot problems is easy to > describe. The devil is in the details ;) > > 1) Boot the system by manually specifying the root fs. > > 2) Reconfigure your boot method with correct the root fs. > > 3) Reboot to be certain that you have fixed the problem. > > Based on what you wrote about using the rescue disk, I believe > you are able to boot this system manually. Step 2 is should be > editing /etc/lilo.conf and running "/sbin/lilo" - you should > ensure the "boot=" and "root=" lines are correct. > > Yours sincerely, > > - -- Mark John Suter | I know that you believe you understand > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | what you think I said, but I am not sure > GPG key id F2FEBB36 | you realise that what you heard is not > Ph: +61 4 1126 2316 | what I meant. anonymous > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Public key available from Keyservers or http://www.uq.edu.au/~suter/ > > iD8DBQE5RPEF7EsZXfL+uzYRAu6tAJ9ATaJ/k61Brws1TJuo+Y5QmN30+wCghjWx > j/8y6KoAGeAEQI+qeqsN65g= > =jcXd > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
