Kernel Panic - weird error

First, if this is the wrong list for help questions, please let me know
- I've been searching for answers to this since 10 am (it's 1:20 pm now), and this is the last resource I can find that might offer some help. ~,^

I've installed the Linux-Mandrake 7.2 distro (which uses kernel version 2.2.17) on a PIII system (Asus motherboard, Award Medallion v6.0 BIOS). For some reason, neither LILO nor Grub were able to boot off of the second hard-drive (where Linux is). I've copied over the kernel, and a few other LILO files to a Windows partition on the primary drive. Now, LILO can load the kernel, and the kernel begins to boot.

First, I noticed this during the IDE detection:
hdd [PTBL] [784/255/53] hdd1 < hdd5 hdd6 >
I've never seen the "[PTBL] [784/255/53]" part before on any Linux system, so I was unsure if this was important.

Then, after the raid detection (no, I don't have one, this is a default Mandrake kernel), I get this error:
"Invalid session number or type of track"
which, after searching through the kernel sources, I found was an isofs error.
Right after this error, I get a kernel panic, unable to mount root fs...

The drives are configued like this -

Maxtor 27GB on primary IDE (UDMA/66), master Creative DVD 5x on secondary IDE (UDMA/33), master Quantum 6GB on secondary IDE (UDMA/33), slave

Linux is on the Quantum 6GB hard-drive. Windows is installed on the Maxter 27GB. Windows boots fine with or without LILO.

I've had older versions of Linux running before on this system. I'm confused as to why this is happening, although I suspect a faulty BIOS. I've also suspected that there may be a problem with the hard-drive on the secondary IDE bus being slave with the DVD drive as master, as I'm told this is usually a Bad Idea; although I'm not allowed to move it (it's not my machine), and the owner (my father) doesn't want to move anything unless he absolutely has to, which I've yet to convince him of (after all, Windows works, and that's all he uses - for now).

If there's any other info I should give, please let me know.

Thank you,
Sean Etc.

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It says that the disk geometry was taken from the partition table (instead of using the heuristics that the kernel would use otherwise). Since nobody except fdisk and lilo use the geometry, this is not the cause of your booting problem.

An ancient bug in the Linux setup is that one doesnt specify the root filesystem type. Instead, the kernel tries to interpret the root filesystem in all possible ways until it finds a filesystem type willing to recognize it.

Thus, if the root filesystem is xiafs and you have no xiafs compiled into the kernel, things will fail this way. Or, if the root filesystem is ext2 and ext2 was compiled as a module, you'll have the same problem.

Andries

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have you enabled the optimization ? which add the autotune options and do some time weird thing.

MandrakeSoft Inc                     http://www.chmouel.org
                      --Chmouel
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