Sv: RE: Booting from USB with initrd

Sv: RE: Booting from USB with initrd

[gabriel]

Um yes it is.
How could I otherwise have booted far enough to get the panic?
My boot partition is on the usb I cant boot from hard drive.

----Ursprungligt meddelande----
Från: Jason.Jones@monteith2.areur.army.mil
Datum: Apr 15, 2005 9:29:06 AM
Till: gabriel <gabriel.j@telia.com>
Ärende: RE: Booting from USB with initrd

Is USB even an option to boot off of in the BIOS?  How could the OS boot to
something that isn't detected in the bios?  IMHO.

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
[mailto:linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of gabriel
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 9:28 AM
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Booting from USB with initrd

Hi Im trying to boot an encrypted file system using an initrd on a USB. 
I use syslinux for the actual boot process as I couldnt get Grub to boot
of it for some reason. This is the .cfg

 default vmlinuz
 timeout 100
 prompt 1
 label linux
 kernel vmlinuz
 append initrd=/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rootfstype=minix init=/linuxrc

As far as I can tell this should load the initrd but that never happens.
Everything seems to boot fine. Syslinux loads the kernel and I get to 
the point where initrd should be mounted only to get this error.

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on
unknown-block(1,0)
followed by the USB information and stop.
<5> Vendor SWISSBIT Mode: Victorinox 2.0 Rev 2.00
Type Direct-Access ANSI SCSI Revision: 02
SCSI device sdb: 1022720 512 byte hdwr sectors (524mb)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: asuming driver cache: write-through

I have support for minix, vfat, ext2 and ext3 in the kernel. I have
recompiled the 
kernel 
like 20 times to test different things. So what Im thinking is that the 
USB device doesn't 
get realized before syslinux tries to load it?

Oh I do have the ramdisk in the kernel and everything.

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Sv: Re: Booting from USB with initrd

[gabriel]

On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 09:27 +0200, gabriel wrote:
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block
(1,0)

>Hi Gabriel!

Hi!

>It looks like initrd.gz could not be mounted. The unknown-block(1,0)
>is /dev/ram0 (and has normally initrd attached to it) as specified on
>kernel command line.

>Do you use an initrd or an initramfs? Is the kernel compiled with initrd
>support? Is the ramdisk size big enough to hold your initrd?

I'm no really sure what the difference is. initrd.gz is a compressed file 
with a minix on it. Its created automaticly with build-initrd.sh from loop-
aes 
package.

the ramdisk is 4096 which should be sufficient and yes the kernel has intrd 
support.

>regards

Re: Sv: Re: Booting from USB with initrd

[Bernhard Schauer]

Have you edit the build-initrd.sh script to fit your needs? 

Does 
  http://featherlinux.berlios.de/usb-instructions.htm or
  http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0211.1/0551.html help?)

Totally different Q's: 

Have you called syslinux with the correct parameter to find your
initrd.gz? 

Do you have access to DOS bootable drive (To try to boot the kernel
using loadlin from DOS command prompt. If that works you know that the
issues are regarded to syslinux, if not - initrd/kernel) (?) 

Have you tried to boot kernel + initrd from your local linux
installation?

regards

Sv: Re: Booting from USB with initrd

[gabriel]

>I don't think syslinux digs the "/" in the initrd filename. Did you try 
>it with initrd=initrd.gz?

Yep no difference.