[syslinux] How to delay before mounting root filesystem

[Joel Ebel]

This is the whole reason RUNT Linux exists.  TO be able to boot from USB
devices.  You have the right idea.  You need an initial ramdisk to
sleep, or you need the kernel to be patched to allow time for the USB
device to be initialized.  I haven't had consistent results with the
kernel patches, so RUNT uses an initial ramdisk.  Take a look at the
RUNT website: http://ncsu.edu/project/runt and try making an initrd like
is in RUNT.  I've used busybox with LASH and sleep compiled in.  I also
load modules in the ramdisk, but you can do without that if it's
compiled into the kernel.

Obvious question... Did you run lilo after changing lilo.conf?

Joel

Kharisma Esguerra wrote:
> im not exactly using an initrd since my scsi and usb support are already
> inside the kernel. tried using patch but not working.
> 
> i also tried the initrd with only linuxrc stating "sleep 10" (including the
> needed sash and sleep in the ramdisk bin folder). created an image
> initrd-2.4.20-8.gz and placed it in my usb key (/boot/). so my lilo.conf
> looks like this now.
> 
> boot=/dev/sda
> disk=/dev/sda
> bios=0x80
> default=meema
> image=/boot/bzImage
>   initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.gz
>   root=/dev/sda1
>   label=meema
>   append="ip=off panic=5"
>   readonly
> 
> still, nothings change. my ramdisk didn't even load. is it me? ramdisk
> support is also compiled with the kernel with a minimum ramdisk size of
> 8196. what am i missing?
> 
> i tried slackware 10 for usb. im reading the all the verbose message twice
> during boot-up like its loading two kernels simultaneously.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Velu Erwan [mailto:erwan at seanodes.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 10:17 PM
> To: Kharisma Esguerra
> Cc: syslinux at zytor.com
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] How to delay before mounting root filesystem
> 
> 
> [...]
> 
>>My kernel was compiles with scsi and usb support built-in. My problem
>>now is i can't mount my root filesystem when i tried to boot. kernel
>>somehow takes time before being able to recognize my usb as a
>>valid scsi device thus displaying
> 
> You just have to introduce a sleep (using a dietlib compiled one:
> ftp://foobar.math.fu-berlin.de:2121/pub/dietlibc/bin-i386/sleep) into
> your initrd (just after the module probing).