I am trying to create a bootable usb stick using syslinux. I downloaded the Centos distribution (aka CD.iso). I successfully created a bootable usb stick (fat 32 partition) using syslinux but on boot I get an error that the root filesystem cannot be located and it jumps to the shell.

My syslinux.cfg in the ./syslinux folder looks like this:

label linux0
menu label Boot
kernel /syslinux/vmlinuz0
append initrd=/syslinux/initrd0.img root=/dev/sdb1 rootfstype=vfat rw liveimg

My usb stick has the mbr loaded and ldlinux.sys file.

vmlinuz0 and initrd0.img are in the syslinux folder and squashfs.img and osmin.img are in the root folder of my USB stick.

Very frustrating that I cannot make this work.Please advise if I am missing anything. Thanks in advance for your help.
-Sanjeev

What distro are you trying to boot into? and what boot loader it uses?

It appears that you have only created a bootable usb-pen and when it boots it finds no boot loader serving to no-kernel: nein, kein, null.

1. To make a usb-pen (or a cd or any medium) bootable with syslinux is one thing;
2. To use one boot loader from another is another;
3. To make the boot loader point to an installed kernel (operating system, as whole) is another thing too.

As the post is wanting these data hardly can anyone say more to help you. Be sure first, that the pendrive has an installed distro, Centro, Debian, Slackware, whatever, and has anointed a boot loader to serve it.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.