# VMWare vSphere 4.1U1 Xeon ~amd64 boot kernel panic

## jeffk

I am trying to bring a gentoo ~amd64 system bootable on VMWare vSphere 4.1U1 Xeon hardware. The LiveCD kernel works fine.

I'm getting the following kernel panic, any ideas what I might be doing wrong, and in what areas I might look for missing kernel CONFIG?

```
Booting  '2.6.38-gentoo-r1'

root (hd0,0)

Filesystem is of type ext2fs, partition type 0x83

kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.38-gentoo-r1 root=/dev/sda1 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 KEYTABLE=us quiet

[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x3400, size=0x25e180]

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.38-gentoo-r1 #1

Call Trace:

 [<ffffffffff81358418>] > 0xffffffffff81358418

 ...
```

A small sample of the kernel config, let me know which other CONFIG items to show:

```
 # grep VM /etc/kernels/kernel-config-x86_64-2.6.38-gentoo-r1 

# CONFIG_DEBUG_PERF_USE_VMALLOC is not set

CONFIG_VM_EVENT_COUNTERS=y

CONFIG_SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP_ENABLE=y

CONFIG_SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP=y

CONFIG_VMWARE_BALLOON=y

CONFIG_VMWARE_PVSCSI=y

CONFIG_VMXNET3=y

# CONFIG_I2C_TAOS_EVM is not set

CONFIG_PROC_VMCORE=y

# CONFIG_DEBUG_VM is not set

# CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM is not set

# CONFIG_CRYPTO_VMAC is not set

CONFIG_HAVE_KVM=y

CONFIG_HAVE_KVM_IRQCHIP=y

CONFIG_HAVE_KVM_EVENTFD=y

CONFIG_KVM_APIC_ARCHITECTURE=y

CONFIG_KVM_MMIO=y

CONFIG_KVM_ASYNC_PF=y

CONFIG_KVM=m

CONFIG_KVM_INTEL=m

# CONFIG_KVM_AMD is not set
```

```
(chroot) livecd net # cat /etc/fstab 

# <fs>                  <mountpoint>    <type>          <opts>          <dump/pass>

/dev/sda1               /               ext4            defaults                0 1

shm                     /dev/shm        tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
```

Thanks!

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## MattM

For hardened kernel, but you should be able to migrate/use-  http://www.deploylinux.net/matt/2011/03/additional-resources-for-gentoo-server-admins-using-vmware-vsphere-41u1.html

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