[syslinux] isolinux usage problem

[Eric Nicholson]

On 5/10/07, Tobias Pflug <Gilligan- at gmx.net> wrote:
> hi everyone,
>
> I am trying to create a custom live cd but I am
> having some problems with isolinux.
>
> A rough sketch of my process :
>
> 1) bootstrapped a small rpm based system in /target
> 2) dd if=/dev/zero of=images/initrd.img bs=1k count=262144
> 3) /sbin/mke2fs -F -v -m0 images/initrd.img
> 4) mount -o loop images/initrd.img ./initrd_tmp
> 5) cp -av /target/* ./initrd_tmp
> 6) umount
> 7) gzip -9 < images/initrd.img > images/initrd.bin
> 8) cp images/initrd.bin staging_iso_image/boot/isolinux/initrd.bin
> 9) mkisofs -R -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
>   -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o \
>   iso/cdrom_linux_boot_proj1.iso staging_iso_image/boot
>
> The image does boot and the kernel that I specified loads, but the
> boot process freezes at:
>
> "RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0"
>
>
> I should add that, when I do not specify the ramdisk size
> as boot parameter the kernel complains about trying to read
> beyond ramdisk size. If I do specify the size (as I pasted below)
> the boot process freezes like I just said.
>
> I am well aware that this problem might just be the cause of
> general stupidity and nothing isolinux specific but this ml
> was the best place I could think of :)
>
> Thank you for any help.
> regards,
>
> Tobi
>
> PS:
> from my isolinux.cfg:
>
> kernel vmlinuz
> append initrd=initrd.bin init=/sbin/init root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=262144

Here is a link to some solutions that I found:

http://wiki.systemimager.org/index.php/Troubleshooting#Ramdisk_too_small.3F_Getting_errors.3F

Adding the ramdisk_blocksize=1024 fixed mine.  However, the second
solution on this page refers to an error like you are getting about
reading beyond the ramdisk size.

Hope this helps,
Eric Nicholson