I cannot figure out how to boot a Liquorix kernel installed in MEPIS8.5. I have installed the kernel using smxi, all seems to go well, but when I select the new kernel in Grub, it stalls at 'Begin: waiting for root file system'. Googling this phrase comes up with lots of entries going back several years, but none of the fixes I've found will make this work. Also, I cannot install Liquorix kernels directly from within MEPIS, because there's a dependency on gcc 4.4 that I can't get past.

I've been running these kernels in Sidux, and they work great. That uses the newer Grub, however, so that doesn't translate to MEPIS which uses the older Grub. There's nothing on the MEPIS forums either, so I'm stumped.

Any help would be appreciated.

Mike
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First of all, mepis still uses the /dev/hda type syntax for drive mounting, which won't work with any new 2.6.33 kernels.

Second, as far as I know, the liquorix kernels won't work anyway unless you add debian backports and install gcc 4.4 and I think one or two other packages.

mepis is debian lenny/stable with a new new packages added and some default configurations changed in sometimes quite significant ways.

antix is no problem, you can go to their forums and search for liquorix and you'll find the how-tos, but antix is based on debian testing, which is totally compatible with liquorix kernels.
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Thanks for the quick reply. Obviously I'm noob at this, and assumed that if smxi gave you the choice of installing a kernel, it must be ok...not so. I've been wanting to try the new AntX so this is a good reason to do so.

This is a very helpful forum...thanks!

Mike
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no, actually, to tell you the truth, when mepis started using smxi and recommending it, I was one of the last to learn that fact.

Also, when lenny went stable, and about 6 months later, in fact, liquorix kernels were installable on mepis and lenny, but over time, the differences between sid/testing and stable grow too large, and liquorix won't work.

However, once squeeze goes stable, and mepis is built from squeeze, for another 6 months or so, probably until gcc 4.5 is released into sid, you will again be able to install liquorix kernels in squeeze or mepis.

The trick with these stable releases like mepis/stable is to NOT try to use the latest kernels, or if you must, to use the debian backports to install the latest.

Also, Mepis and Lenny use some legacy methods that should have been dropped but were not, Lenny especially was bad about this, they should have stopped using /dev/hdx and moved to either UUID or LABEL for menu.lst fstab and some other areas internally.

In Debian this is handled by an updating tool that converts all the /dev/hdx to UUID, I believe, Mepis will have to do that as well, but I don't follow what mepis does when it's not really debian compatible, that's not my issue, and I can't track all these differences that are introduced by other distros.

So in a word, if liquorix kernels work in Mepis, that's nice for mepis users, if they don't, they don't. They should always work in Antix, however. At some point I may try to show the user some extra information if they are running a Debian Stable based system and if it's a liquorix kernel, but even that is tricky, because roughly 30% of the time of the stable release, that works fine too.
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On my Lenny test system I installed an old Liquorix kernel 2.6.28 I think and that worked. Newer Liquorix kernels indeed need to have gcc 4.4 installed which is normally not present in Lenny.
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