I have had problems lately, after running a system directly of a usb-device with journalized ext3 on an AMD64 machine.

While running or just sitting on a tty, the kernel will spit out a Journaling I/O Error. Only way to use the system after this is use what is already fully loaded into RAM. This means I cannot even shutdown or reboot through software. Have to push the power button & hold.

I have tested with the 2.6.15 kernel and 2.6.14.2

I am trying to figure out where the problem is and how to resolve it.

I suspect the following have a direct result in why this is happening:
1) I have thus far tried two different kernels:
- Generic compiled for i386.
- Generic compiled for i586.

The reason for this is that I donot know what hardware I will be plugging my system into at any given time. (only that is a pc and not a powerpc or anything else like sparc..)

2) The computer has no harddrive.
- perhaps the OS is expected any form of harddrive? I am running off a 512mb usbstick, with much space to spare.
- There is only 1 IDE device, and thats a single dvdcdrw.

3)Its a usbstick, running root from there!
- might there be a bug with the usbdrivers, journalizing, and running root off of that?

I truly want to avoid compiling a specifc amd64 if I don't have to. (I will if I must). Modules take 15megs..and I am trying to squeeze as much as I can on a 512mb usbstick. I do have the space, but I donot like the loss.

Is there a workaround, as in using pivot_root?
I am unsure how to run pivot_root at boot time to load my OS into ram..afterall I have a gigabyte of memory and the usbstick is 512mb. Just point me in the right direction, I had bad luck searching for how to do this thus far.

**EDIT***
Did I originally post this in LFS Forum? I thought I had it in the generic software forum...