I am trying to figure out how to create images of a linux system I built, in a way that I can write them to flash cards and have them automatically boot in a system, without having to run grub or anything like that on the machines.

I have been looking into this for several hours now, and think that I am close to having it figured out. What I think will work (although I dont know exactly how to do it yet) is:
1. create a small dos partition at the front of the flash with a small kernel, initrd, and syslinux
2. boot the initrd image, with a tiny system capable of mounting the other partition
3. chroot to the other partition, where the real system (ext2 filesystem) is
4. free up the RAM occupied by the ramdisk

sounds right to me, but I am looking for anyone who may have experience doing something similar, or anyone who might be able to offer me any suggestions or somewhat specific instructions, since I am having trouble finding out too much about this

Thanks