Linux on compact flash
 

hey guys... I am trying to install linux onto a compact flash card of 128 MB and try and get an embedded system to boot from it..

I used the following link for the same:

http://julian.coccia.com/article-37.html

As you can see, the bootloader used here is grub. While booting the compact flash,i get the following page with errors:
========================
Making device-mapper control node
scanning logical volumes
reading all physical volumes.This may take a while......
foung volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type lvm2
Activating logical volumes
2 logical volumes in volume group "VolGroup00" now active
Trying to resume from /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01
No suspend signature on swap, not resuming
Creating root device
Mounting root filesystem
Cant find ext3 filesystem on /dev/sdb1
mount:Error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3:Invalid argument
Setting up other filesystems
Setting up new root fs
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
No fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults
setuproot: error mounting /proc: no such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: no such file or directory
switching to new root and running init
unmounting old /dev
unmounting old /proc
unmounting old /sys
switchroot: mount failed: no such file or directory
Booting has failed
kernel Panic-not syncing:Attempted to kill init!!

=========================

i used the following grub.conf file :
========
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Dyna-linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 rw root=/dev/sda1 init=/bin/sh
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img

========

Since this did not work, i tried using other bootloaders like syslinux and lilo too.. one of the references we used is

http://www.linfire.net/Build.html

Using this method, the system does not even boot. The booting process stalls with the cursor blinking on the screen without any other messages.
====
Please correct me if i am going wrong with the procedure or if any other modifications need to be done or if any other procedure is to be followed altogether.

Any help will be greatle appreciated. Thank you in advance

The problem is your initrd file, it contains instructions that are used to boot a fedora system which are not suited to booting an embedded system.

Remove the initrd line from your grub configuration

No success yet
 

Thank you for replying promptly...as you said initrd of the system might not work for an embedded system, i tried booting without the initrd.img file...here is what i got:

VFS:Cannot open root device "sdb1" or unknown block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic-not syncing:VFS:Unable to mount rootfs on unknownblock (0,0).

I then tried to modify the existing initrd.img...I just changed all ext3 options to ext2 in some mounting commands...when i tried booting from the compact flash again i encountered the same errors as given above, which suggests that grub is not executing initrd at all.

When i try giving "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7" command without any "root=" option i got a message saying:

VFS:Cannot open root device "NULL" or unknown block(202,3)

The unknown block(202,3) surprises me as all the other devices give unknown block(0,0)...so,don't know where i m going wrong..any suggestions??

Thats because the root you are providing the kernel is incorrect, have you tried /dev/sda1, as i am guessing you have only one compact flash disk with one partition.

Also try /dev/hda1 the last time i ran embedded of a CF the kernel picked up the disk as hd not sd