Re: [Fwd: Installing from distribution CDs]

[Christian Limpach <christian.limpach@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 20:16:36 -0600, Anthony Liguori
<anthony@codemonkey.ws> wrote:
>        ROOT_DEV = MKDEV(RAMDISK_MAJOR,0);
> /*old_decode_dev(ORIG_ROOT_DEV);*/
> 
> This defaults the root device to /dev/ram0 instead of trying to get it
> from the boot loader.

Yes.  The problem with getting it from the boot loader is that, as far
as the domain is concerned, there is no boot loader.  ORIG_ROOT_DEV
points into the boot_params data which is probably initialized to 0 --
the original code initializes ROOT_DEV to 0.

It was changed to point to the ramdisk in this revision:
1.19 04/09/14 23:07:32+01:00 kaf24@freefall.cl.cam.ac.uk 24 23 1/1/1470
    Use a better dummy rootdev in Linux 2.6, so we don't auto-dhcp
    when we shouldn't (David Becker).

The patch was sent to the mailinglist by David Becker on September 14
in message <20040914171358.GJ921@cs.duke.edu>


It's not entirely obvious to me why/how this fails in rd_load_image
because I don't use initrds and ramdisks much and don't know what the
expected bahaviour is.  Why does it work better with ROOT_DEV == 0?  I
would expect the open(from,...) to fail or does ROOT_DEV get set to
some other default value in this case?

   christian


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