Kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)
This indicates that the kernel hasn't found a viable root filesystem on the second partition.
You could have a look at what is on the card, but you need a system that can read the linux native ext4 filesystem, which e.g. MS Windows does not.
The implication is that the card was not created correctly. There are various complicated ways recommended to do it; the most foolproof is probably via dd
if you have a linux system:
sudo dd if=raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress
This has never failed for me and I have created a lot of SD cards for all models of Pi. The most significant pitfall here is the difference between /dev/sdb
and /dev/sdb1
. Obviously this may not be the same base device (sdb
) for you, but it's the partition number (1
) that trips some people up. You don't want that, you want just sdb
.
You can do a rough check via:
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Again, no number on the end. This should show the two partitions, the first one of which is type WIN95 FAT32 (LBA)
and the second Linux
. This doesn't guarantee the card is okay, but it is a good sign. You can also use sudo fdisk -l
if you aren't sure if sdb
or sdc
or whatever is the card, since regardless of what filesystems are or aren't on it, the first line will tell you how big the device is in GB. Unless you have a lot of USB drives sticking out of your machine, the card is probably the only thing that is ~8 or 16 GB or whatever size it is.