On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 10:09:22PM +0200, Stephan Henningsen wrote: > I am desperate for help. And since the problem is in the > kernel-phase (my conclusion for the time being anyway), I > dare to ask on this list, though it is not directly > *kernel* development related. I don't know all gory^Wfine details of the x86 boot process, but I've recently put together a small bootable ramdisk for StrongARM (which has a *much* cleaner boot process). > I want to make a boot and root disk. The root disk is ok so > far; it mounts and gives me a login prompt, when I use it > together with another boot disk, which I have not made. > > However, my boot disk (with kernel dd'ed directly to floppy), > crashes instantly after pressing Enter when it prompts for > root disk. It gives an Oops:0000, a stack dump and a kernel > panic. This boot disk I have chosen not to use anymore, > since I would like LILO. I think you'd better go for syslinux for floppy disks. Much more flexible. > My bootdisk with LILO works a littel better. It loads > and prompts. It still crashes upon prompting, but leave one > simple error: > Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 02:00 > which I don't exactly know what means; is it mounting the > wrong device? Unknown file system? It means that the kernel can't mount device 02:00, which is /dev/fd0. Can either be that you didn't compile the correct filesystem into the kernel, or the floppy is broken (floppy disks are unreliable). > Then I took the kernel .config from a 2.3.0 from the tiny > linux dist, which boots and loads my root disk fine. I put > the .config in my 2.4.10's tree and compile. But this > kernel gives me the same error. I hope you did that the right way: cp config-2.3.0 linux-2.4.10/.config cd linux-2.4.10 make oldconfig [normal way of building a kernel] > So: The exact same config from a 2.3.0-kernel, which works > doesn't work with a 2.4.10-kernel! This I find weird. And > this is where (hopefully) you people can help me out =). Could you give 2.4.10-ac5 a try? The -ac tree contains a floppy probe fix since 2.4.9-ac3 and I'm not sure if it's already propagated to Linus' tree. > I have made a tarball with all my work so far including > (real tiny, honestly) shell scripts that compress and write > the kernel and image. > > http://212.10.213.249/~stephan/bootdisk/ > http://212.10.213.249/~stephan/bootdisk.tar.gz > > mkroot.sh compresses root.img and writes it to floppy. > mklilo.sh formats, copies kernel and installs lilo on floppy. > mkboot.sh writes kernel raw to floppy -- "obsolete". > > I use Debian potato 2.2.r2 with kernel 2.4.0 and undated > versions of (most of) the system packages like modutils, > util-linux (rdev), and more. If you're using Debian, apt-get install mkrboot. Erik -- J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems, Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Phone: +31-15-2783635 Fax: +31-15-2781843 Email: J.A.K.Mouw@its.tudelft.nl WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/ - Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ IRC Channel: irc.openprojects.net / #kernelnewbies Web Page: http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
