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Re: [LUG] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,8)

 

Julian Hall wrote:
>
> Any suggestions, please?  I really don't want to have to reinstall
> Linux *again*, which regrettably I've found to be required more often
> than Windows!

It is hard to suggest, as you haven't described how you broke it. I
appreciate you may not know.

The error is typical of not having the appropriate drivers (or settings)
to mount the root file system.

I'd expect this if.....

1) You upgraded (changed) the kernel, but didn't run lilo afterwards
(GRUB doesn't require this rerunning and should really replace lilo for
most people).

Fix for this, is boot from recovery media, mount hard disk, chroot to
mount, and run the omitted "lilo" command, and then reboot from the
harddisk.

2) Something bad happened to the disk partitions (such as might happen
if you installed an OS over the top of the disk space Linux was using.

3) You broke /etc/fstab.

There are probably other possible causes, but these spring to mind.

Interestingly of course with the right user settings you should be able
to mount remote shares using SMB without ever using root privileges, and
without root privileges you shouldn't be able to break the systems boot.
Brings us back to the discussion on use of root in another thread.

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