Hello,

For the reasons of furthering familiarity with Linux and its file system, I decided to create a small project based very loosely on Pocket_Linux (even though it appears to be quite out of date). However, I opted to do this on a usb stick, instead of floppies.

To summarize;

1. I created two partitions on the usb and formated them ext2.

2. I compiled a Linux kernel 2.6.32.59, with minimal support as was needed for the most basic features of my laptop, and transferred it into /boot on what I chose to be my root partition on the usb stick.

3. I saved myself the hassle of building Grub from source (a couple of attempts were frustrating, as they were producing compiler errors) by simply transferring my present Debian's Grub to the usb stick with...

.../mnt/temp being where I had mounted /sdb1, which I had chosen to be my root partition.

4. Then I booted from the usb, correctly suspecting that I would be presented with the grub cli screen.

It is at this point that I run into trouble, as Grub insists on a different drive/device naming protocol which is utterly confusing, especially since even that has changed from an earlier version (Legacy) with which I never had any contact, but for which there abounds lots of web pages that will lead you up a dead end.

Anyway...

I did this at the Grub prompt;

Well, to my surprise, I actually DO boot up my personal kernel, but there's a problem, it seems, with the second line of the above code, specifically, the...

...part. I do get a list of "available partitions". In fact here's what appears after my kernel has booted...

I have tried some variations on the "root=" option, but no to avail. How can I know what is what, and how to set the correct root partition (which I know to be my "linux format" sdb1)?

Any help? My thanks in advance...

use hda1 instead of sda1 or else set labels on filesystems/partition and use label in kernel line instead of using particular block device name

I'd think that if you booted to the usb then it would be labeled as sda.

You know, I learned some shard of new knowledge inductively from jefro's comment, but it is another story. For right here, I eventually got some success trying em31amit's suggestion of root=hda1, but there is something weird about it. It seems to indicate that the partition (hda1) is ntfs, which would be analogous to what is on my laptop's hard drive (a derelict Windows XP installation) on the first partition, and not the usb stick, which only has two partitions, both ext2.

Put me to wondering. These numbers (the second column) just before hda1, etcetera...

..are the size of the drive partitions in blocks. An fdisk -l output of my laptop, from Debian, gives me these specs (abbreviated)...

The last two are my usb partitions. So, my usb is not being read by the kernel, apparently. Presumably that is what the (driver?) business and those 'garbage' numbers are about? Though I did select the options for building usb support into the kernel (it was one of the few things I did build into it, as it is experimental), it is possible and probable that I left something important out. I will rebuild it, taking more care.

Thanks for the comments!

I'm surprised you can still enumerate hda with that kernel.
You'll need udev (and appropriate init scripts) for the sda? partitions.

The mtd would imply a flash (not USB) device.

I would say set labels on USB disk filesystem.and try.to.use it while booting to passing it to kernel . Also you can use filesystem uid's that is very common nowadays .. creating devices by name is responsibility of udev. You should also check that too.

Thanks.

Okay, I am taking a guess here, because this is beyond me at this time and I don't know. I assume that the udev rules would go on the flash drive (I stand corrected) that I have booted from, in a /etc/udev/rules.d directory? How can I get to them if, once my kernel has booted, I am unable to access it? What am I seeing wrong here?

Thanks, I will try that, for now.