First your must know exactly how linux boot (not at source code level). Most recent linux distributions boot as grub —> kernel —> initramfs’ /init executable All the userspace affair is started by initramfs’ /init. Kernel no longer join the boot process. >From you description, I think you were blocked by the initramfs concept. Initramfs is the first root filesystem and reside in memeory. It’s loaded by grub, and the kernel automatically mount it, execute the /init. The /init executable can do some extra initialisation and switch to the real root filesystem on disk. for detail /Documentaion/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs Hope that would be useful to your. > On Mar 5, 2016, at 2:38 AM, Patrick <plafratt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hello, > > I was able to install SYSLINUX on a disk image and get the kernel I built to start booting Linux with QEMU pointing to a loopback device associated with the disk image. However, at some point far into the boot process, I get a kernel panic. I can't read the beginning of the error messages that the kernel prints, because the errors run off the screen. > > I copied the bzImage onto the disk image, and I'm not sure where to go from there. Is the next step to build the initrd image? I don't yet know how to get the kernel to mount a device so it can find the root file system. > > Any help is appreciated. > > Patrick > _______________________________________________ > Kernelnewbies mailing list > Kernelnewbies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies _______________________________________________ Kernelnewbies mailing list Kernelnewbies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies