[syslinux] Boot Failed: please change disks...

[fetak at comcast.net]

I had to create a single floppy image holding the kernel and initrd of SuSe8.0 distibution. When I boot the computer, it first loads the kernel, and starts loading the initrd.  After a short while it halts saying “Boot Failed: please change disks and press a key to continue.”  

The floppy image is served by a PXE server, so I am not sure if the problem I am facing has anything to do with “bad floppy.”

Here is the list of commands I went through to create the floppy image:

mkdir /tmp/bootDir
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/boot.img bs=512 count=5760
losetup /dev/loop0 /tmp/boot.img
mkdosfs /dev/loop0
mount /dev/loop /tmp/bootDir
syslinux –s /dev/loop0
<-- here I add files to /tmp/bootDir.  The files addes are the kernel, initrd, message that were a part of bootdisk and modules1 floppy images shipped with SuSe8.0 CD -->
umount /tmp/bootDir
losetup –d /dev/loop0

and my syslinux.cfg looks like:

--
default linux
implicit 1
timeout 60
prompt 1
display message

label linux
	kernel linux
	append initrd=initrd ramdisk_size=65536 

label manual
	kernel linux
	append initrd=initrd ramdisk_size=65536 manual 1
--

I am using SysLinux 2.06.  I have a chance to try this on a few computers and result does not change.

I am wondering if the ramdisk_size is giving me problem.  Expending this to the size of the uncompressed initrd didn’t change the result though. Any suggestions?

Fet