Can't boot RH 7.2 or 9 SMP kernel on Netfinity 5500

["Gregg Brickner" <rgb rgb seanet com>]

Hi,

I'm at wits end.  I have an IBM Netfinity 5500 (8660-71X) with dual
PIII/550s, 1 GB RAM, and a single 18.2 GB disk on the ServerRAID adapter.  I
can boot the uniprocessor kernel for Redhat 7.2 and 9.0 just fine, however I
can't boot any SMP kernel I've tried so far.  The error ends with something
like

  Kernel Panic
  VFS:  Cannot open root device LABEL=/ or 00:00
  Please append a correct root= boot option

I've tried installing 7.2 with the kernel on the distribution CDs.  I've
tried the same for RH 9.  I've upgraded the kernel RPM to 2.4.20-13.9, and
tried both the 586 and 686 RPM.  I've tried putting "root=/dev/sda2" (or
whatever, depending on the install) into grub.conf.  I've tried moving the
disk around in the box and changing the ServerRAID configuration.  All
attempts give the same error as above.

The Netfinity BIOS is current with the version on IBM's Web site.  There
*are* two processors installed :-)  Both PIIIs are enabled and pass the
onboard diagnostics.  Any ideas?

Thanks,

Gregg