[syslinux] EXTLINUX

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 06/29/2010 10:57 AM, Collins, Cris wrote:
> I am trying to boot a ramdisk on a usb stick in read-only mode using 
> extlinux. When the system boots all I am getting is a blinking cursor. 

At what point?

> The stick booted with lilo, but I had some issues with lilo so I am 
> trying extlinux.
> 
> 1) I partitioned the stick as a linux partition, formated it ext2, and 
> mounted /dev/sda1 on /mnt/flash.
> 2) I am running extlinux 3.86.
> 3) excuted "extlinux -i  /mnt/flash"
> 4) created /mnt/flash/extlinux.conf
> 5) contents:
> DEFAULT linux
> prompt 1
> timeout 1200
> LABEL linux
> KERNEL vmlinuz
> APPEND initrd=initrd.img rw prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_blocksize=1024 
> ramdisk=2966000 root=/dev/ram0
> 6) excuted "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"
> 7) copied initrd.img and vmlinuz to /mnt/flash
> 8) umounted /mnt/flash

Is your ext2 partition marked active?

You may want to try the new Syslinux 4.00 that was just released.

> I know it sounds strange but I wanted to do the same with isolinux, but 
> get the following error:
> .
> .
> .
> .
> 16384 ram181(driver?)
> No filesystem could mount root, tried: romfs
> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 
> unknown-block(1,0)
> 
> Any ideas how might get this to work?

This means the kernel booted fine, it just isn't pointed to a valid root
filesystem.  Device 1,0 is /dev/ram, so I'm guessing you're missing your
initrd, or you have the wrong filesystem driver for your particular initrd.

	-hpa