Upgraded 9.04 to 9.10 via Synaptic and recieved the same error message, "root filesystem fails to mount". Was able to solve the issue by entering root passwd, change directory to /etc, make backup copy of fstab. When I edited fstab I noticed my root partition was mounted as my storage drive. By reediting fstab, this corrected my root mount problem.
Upgraded 9.04 to 9.10 via Synaptic and recieved the same error message, "root filesystem fails to mount". Was able to solve the issue by entering root passwd, change directory to /etc, make backup copy of fstab. When I edited fstab I noticed my root partition was mounted as my storage drive. By reediting fstab, this corrected my root mount problem.