From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751373AbWFIDei (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jun 2006 23:34:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751378AbWFIDei (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jun 2006 23:34:38 -0400 Received: from users.ccur.com ([66.10.65.2]:29888 "EHLO gamx.iccur.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751373AbWFIDei (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Jun 2006 23:34:38 -0400 Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 23:33:50 -0400 From: Joe Korty To: Paul Dickson Cc: Arjan van de Ven , rahul@genebrew.com, ram.gupta5@gmail.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: booting without initrd Message-ID: <20060609033350.GA1148@tsunami.ccur.com> Reply-To: joe.korty@ccur.com References: <728201270606070913g2a6b23bbj9439168a1d8dbca8@mail.gmail.com> <1149813659.3124.31.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20060608184325.5c470dcf.paul@permanentmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060608184325.5c470dcf.paul@permanentmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 06:43:25PM -0700, Paul Dickson wrote: > On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 02:40:59 +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > > On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 13:40 -0400, Rahul Karnik wrote: > > > On 6/7/06, Ram Gupta wrote: > > > > I am trying to boot with 2.6.16 kernel at my desktop running fedora > > > > core 4 . It does not boot without initrd generating the message "VFS: > > > > can not open device "804" or unknown-block(8,4) > > > > Please append a correct "root=" boot option > > > > Kernel panic - not syncing : VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,4) > > > > > > AFAIK Fedora sets up the kernel command line with "root=LABEL=/" in > > > grub.conf and therefore needs the initrd in order to work correctly. > > > If you do not want an initrd, then change this to > > > "root=/dev/" in grub.conf. > > > > it's more than that; also udev is used from the initrd to populate a > > ramfs /dev, if you go without the initrd you need to populate the > > *real* /dev manually first When I do the following to FC5, I am able to boot kernel.org kernels w/o an initrd: # mount --bind / /mnt # cd /mnt/dev # mknod null c 1 3 # mknod console c 5 1 # for i in $(seq 0 9); do mknod tty$i c 4 $i; done # cd / # umount /mnt IMHO, FC5's failure to set up a minimal disk-based /dev like this is a bug on its part. Regards, Joe