Here’s something all Linux newbies and journeymen should tape to every monitor in their office:

When switching Linux systems from one root partition to another, always check the bootloader config carefully when making any changes to the bootloader of any kind.

For instance, today I tried to completely hose my LFS rig. How? By removing all references to my stub Mandrake install from lilo.conf and running ‘lilo -v’ to update. Great, but there’s a problem. My old lilo.conf also had this problem, but I fixed it. Which is to say, I had the wrong partition marked as ‘root = ‘ in the lilo.conf. This error was in both copies of said file… and while I fixed it on one, I didn’t fix it in the other.

So there I am, staring at the kernel panic message from the fact that it was trying to use my old /usr partition as the / partition. Idiot. It’s a damned good thing you can pass the ‘root = ‘ parameter at boot time!

Have I mentioned that I love Linux? No? Well, I do. It’s even good enough to let clumsy oafs such as myself get back out of the trouble they put themselves into.