On Thursday 24 April 2008, reader@(protected):
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@(protected):

> >>  kernel /kernel-2.6.25-r1 root=(hd0)/sda3
> >>
> >> Fails
> >
> > Won't work. (hd0) is a grub thing. You need a /dev/sda3 or similar
> > in there
>
> I think you are wrong about that. But just a fine point and not
> central to the problem.
> For example I know for sure you can use the grub notation at the
> kernel address like:
>
>  kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-XXXXXX
>
> At least I know for sure it was possible at one time.. I haven't
> actully used that notation in grub for quite a while. I do have that
> notation as the address for the splash image in several working
> grub.confs. (like splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz)

To clarify, your kernel line will work just fine with that notation.
It's an instruction to grub in the form of a path that it understands.
Essentially you are telling grub which partition to look on for the
kernel and it knows what (hd0,0) is. /dev/sda1 won't work there, as
grub does not understand Linux kernel names (There might be a hack to
get around this but the code would be ugly as hell).

You have a "root" directive to grub, so the notation is
redundant. "root" is there so you don;t have to keep typing (hd0,0)
everywhere

<snip>

> In the screen shot provided note that it appears grub is expecting an
> intramfs and only lists those types of devices, rejecting both
> (hd0,0) and /dev/sda3.
>
>  http://www.jtan.com/~reader/vu/disp.cgi

Aaaaaaaaaah, now I see. It's one of two things, and neither is your
grub.conf. That's the kernel spitting that garbage at you, so your
grub.conf is just fine. You have either:

1. Compiled in the need for an initrd and have not supplied one, or
2. (more likely) you do not have support for your chipset, ata and/or
root filesystem compiled into the kernel (NOT as modules). "VFS: Unable
to mount root fs" is almost invariable due to this

Do you want to use an initrd, or due the highly customized thing and
dispense with it?


--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

--
gentoo-user@(protected)