Re: Root fs and ramdisk

Richard Dynes (rdynes@varcom.com)
Mon, 06 Dec 1999 18:32:15 -0500


Jonathan Brauer wrote:
> wondering how to get the kernel to recognize a ramdisk at a specific location
> and to mount this as the root device.
>

I'll assume you want to use lilo?

Read the Bootdisk HOWTO in /usr/doc/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO. Read
/usr/doc/lilo-0.21/doc/*.

> Do I need to use initrd?
> How do I specify through the command line to use the disk and the like.
>

You need initrd iff your kernel image is too large, generally because
of included drivers, SCSI being the most often reason in my
experience. Initrd is used in a two stage boot for this case. I
generally don't need an initrd.

> I have tried various messages to kernel, but all result in a panic saying it can
> not mount root device 00:00
>

00:00 is the major/minor numbers that the loader is trying to access.
They are obviously wrong. You will see 02:1c for fd0H1440, for
example. This indicates that neither rdev or lilo has been used to
install this information into the MBR.

-Richard

-- 
    Richard Dynes
    rdynes@varcom.com

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