I am in this unfortunate situation with my system now: I am using RedHat 6.1 installation and default kernel and setting. It worked fine for months with lilo that switch between Linux and Win98. However, after I'd reinstall win98 with a new CD Rom, I cannot mount the linux native partition from the LILO disk, the error message shown below: Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 hdb: hdb1 hdb2 EXT2-fs: 03:04: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features. [MS-DOS FS Rel. 12,FAT 0,check=n,conv=b,uid=0,umask=022,bmap] [me=0x0,cs=0,#f=0,fs=0,fl=0,ds=0,de=0,data=0,se=0,ts=0,ls=0,rc=0,fc=4294967295] Transaction block size = 512 Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:04 Then I tried the rescue sequences (from both LILO-rescue and boot-rescue (install disks)) I ran the e2fsck with my linux native partition and it said it's clean! bash# e2fsck /dev/hda4 e2fsck 1.12, 9-Jul-98 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 /dev/hda4: clean, 54551/131616 files, 227516/263064 blocks Even I tried to force the check by e2fsck -f /dev/hda4 No error message returned However, maybe I am not familiar to e2fsck, i tried another superblock location and error message occur. bash# e2fsck -b1 /dev/hda4 e2fsck 1.12, 9-Jul-98 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda4 bash# e2fsck -b8193 /dev/hda4 e2fsck 1.12, 9-Jul-98 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda4 the "clean" message only occur when I called -b0, so I doubt if the super-block of my partition is still corrupted? But I still cannot mount that silly /dev/hda4 bash# mount /dev/hda4 foo EXT2-fs: 03:04: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features. mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda4, or too many mounted file systems obviously it's not caused by wrong fs type, and i gave no "bad option" at all

Try to re-run /sbin/lilo