Re: Differences between 2.2.x and 2.4.x initrd

Ben Collins
2001-11-13T20:03:36Z

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 02:49:31PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Ben Collins wrote:
> > Basically what we have is a kernel image with ramdisk and initrd
> > enabled, and a root disk image slapped on the end that is loaded via
> > initrd.
> >
> > On 2.2.x, this works without problems; the ramdisk is loaded, and
> > /sbin/init is executed. However, with 2.4.x, it's quite different.
> >
> > It loads the initial ramdisk, mounts it fine, tries to execute /linuxrc
> > (same as in 2.2.x, but it isn't there, so it continues), and then
> > complains with this:
> >
> > VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
> > VFS: Cannot open root device "" or 02:00
> >
> > For some reason it is trying to mount /dev/fd, and totally forgets
> > about /dev/ram. If I pass root=/dev/ram to the command line, it works
> > fine, but I don't want to have to do this :)
>
> hrm, if your root filesystem is indeed in RAM, then root=/dev/ram seems
> appropriate on both 2.2.x and 2.4.x. That's what 2.2.x and 2.4.x
> Documentation/initrd.txt seem to indicate to me, anyway.

Well, the point being that 2.2.x worked implicitly, and 2.4.x doesn't. I
don't want to have to tell people who have been using tilo forever and a
day that they now have to add additional command line to get it to work
with 2.4.x.