Excuse my ignorance, but I am under the impression initrd is not required.

Kernel 2.6.8, which I compiled from source, has an initrd file but 2.6.13.1 does not, which I installed via apt-get.

I could try adding the path to initrd for 2.6.8 and see if it works. Now that I have a basic understanding of what exactly initrd's function is, I can see that it has a possibility of fixing the long-standing problem.


edit: It turns out I saved myself the hassle of a reboot, as kernel 2.6.8 already has the path to initrd specified and it doesn't work any better than .13 does.

I appreciate your suggestion though.

How old is my 600x?

I think IBM made them in late 1999.


Full specs on it:

*500mhz p3
*NeoMagic 4mb video card
*Cirrus Crystal sound
*128ram, which was an upgrade from the regular 64mb.
*12gb HD.
*13.1 inch TFT
*USB
*Modem rj-11
*warm-swappable cdrom/floppy
*it looks like scsi out/in on the back of the machine, which i think is actually the docking station.
*Ir transmit and recieve
*s-video out
*11pin? video out
*old 32pin? printer port

it works decent, a hell of a lot better than m$ would ever run on it.'

making the 2.6.13 kernel from scratch took about 35 minutes

Could someone please check to see what the upper and lower extremes are for the block device cdrom? I've been searching around and I keep seeing the values '3, 64' but this is for hdb and not cdrom.

Here's an example...
brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 22, 0 2005-02-26 01:38 hdc

Since cdrom was once linked to hdc, can I just use '22, 0' for mknod to recreate cdrom? Also, I'm assuming the gid for cdrom should be cdrom rather than root, just like it is for hdc.

#mknod /dev/cdrom b 22 0
#mount /dev/cdrom
>mount: you must specify the filesystem type

# mount /dev/hdc
> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc,
> missing codepage or other error
> (could this be the IDE device where you in fact use
> ide-scsi so that sr0 or sda or so is needed?)
> In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
> dmesg | tail or so

Bump. You guys were doing an excellent job.