[syslinux] isolinux cd hangs at booting kernel

[Dan Osterrath]

I've created a bootable cd with isolinux but it can't load the kernel.
It detects everything fine, decompresses the initrd, loads and decompresses the kernel and then tries to boot the kernel. But after that the computer hangs.

Here's the screen dump:
ISOLINUX  1.73  2002-05-26  Copyright (C) 1994-2002 H. Peter Anvin
isolinux: Starting up, DL = 9F
isolinux: Loaded spec packet OK, drive = 9F
isolinux: Sector size appears to be 0800
isolinux: Loading main image from LBA = 00000AF2
isolinux: Sectors to load = 0004
isolinux: Loaded boot image, verifying...
isolinux: Main image read, jumping to main code...
isolinux: Root directory at LBA = 0000001D
isolinux: isolinux directory at LBA = 0000001E
isolinux: About to load config file...
isolinux: Configuration file opened...
Loading linux
Loading initrdgz.img.....................................................................................
Ready.
Uncompressing Linux... OK, booting the kernel.

my hardware:
Asus P5A with Ali Aladdin chipset (M15xx)
256MB RAM

the initrd image:
.:
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Mai 29 19:55 bin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root        16384 Mai 29 19:48 dev
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Mai 29 19:55 etc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Mai 29 19:55 lib
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            8 Mai 29 19:56 linuxrc -> bin/bash
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Mai 29 19:56 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Mai 29 19:56 proc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Mai 29 19:56 var
./bin:
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      2554463 Mai 29 02:30 bash
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1558046 Mai 29 02:59 blockdev
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1665160 Mai 29 03:00 fdisk
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1590380 Mai 29 03:00 losetup
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      2219592 Mai 29 03:00 mount
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1534992 Mai 29 03:00 pivot_root
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1579958 Mai 29 03:01 rdev
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1693611 Mai 29 02:00 readelf
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      1638118 Mai 29 03:00 sfdisk
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            4 Mai 29 19:55 sh -> bash
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      2119455 Mai 29 03:00 umount
/lfs/dev:
[ ... snip (created with MKDEV-1.5) ... ]
following dirs are empty but exists:
./etc ./lib ./mnt ./proc ./var

the /isoimage/isolinux/ directory:
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root      5416064 Mai 29 19:59 initrdgz.img
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         9020 Mai 29 20:04 isolinux.bin
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root           88 Mai 29 20:04 isolinux.cfg
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root       746466 Mai 29 19:24 linux

the /isoimage/isolinux/isolinux.cfg file:
default linux initrd=initrdgz.img root=/dev/hdc
append initrd=initrdgz.img root=/dev/hdc

So where could be the problem? I don't thinks that the kernel contains some wrong settings.

thanks for your help, Dan