Hi,
I read the bootdisk howto from tldp and tried to make my own boot disk. The problem is that when I boot I always get a "kernel panic / init not found".
Although I tried many things I couldn't solve this problem, so perhaps somebody here know what I'm doing wrong.

So here is what I did to create the boot disk:

1. I formatted a disk with FAT
2. Installed SysLinux to the disk
3. took a normal gentoo kernel and stripped it from some things I don't need (audio, usb, etc).
4. Kept support für ext2fs, ramdisk, fat, serial io and so on in the kernel
5. changed all I need from "module" to "kernel"
6. build the kernel and copied it to disk
7. created a loopback root with 4mb
8. created all the necessary directories the how to told me (bin, sbin, etc and so on)
9. statically compiled a program and copied it to /sbin/init.
10. gzip-ed the rootfs.gz
11. copied kernel and rootfs.gz to the disk
12. changed syslinux.cfg to "DEFAULT smallest root=/dev/ram initrd=rootfs.gz init=/sbin/init"

But it doesn't work ! The root is mounted read-only but when the kernel tries to start init I get the kernel panic.


Btw: the reasing why I'm trying this: I have an old, self-written ms-dos based tui program which has to boot from a floppy. Although I still like DOS for some applications I would like to switch to linux. So I try to create a minimalistic boot disk which allows me to run the program from linux.
The statically linked program works fine under gentoo, but not as an init replacement.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong ?

Thanks in advance.

I believe you should add a 'init=/bin/bash' to the line that starts the whole thing...

If I remember correctly, this is used in lilo to start something else... Dig on ...

Hi Ady,

I don't need a shell, I simply want to start directly my application. If the bootdisk howto is correct, it doesn't matter which binary you start. With a normal distribution it would be "init" then some scripts and finally the shell.
But I would like to safe the space on disk and rather not use a shell.

Is it possible to start an application without starting a shell first? I didn't know that...
Try changing "init=/path/to/my/app/appname"... maybe it will work...

Hi Ady,
thanks again for your answer. According to the howto it's possible to start any other application instead of a shell. The application is the shell so to say.
I will try to "dig further" but if someone has a shovel to help me ... ;-)