I am working through David Horton's Pocket Linux Guide on The Linux Documentation Project. I'm only on lesson one and I've been stuck there for a week and a half.

Although I usually try to figure everything out on my own, I'm at a complete loss here.

I ran lilo -r /mnt/floppy on the boot disk.
It ran fine.

I statically compiled bash and tested it on the root disk. I linked /bin/sh to /bin/bash.
I've even used various disks to rule out disk errors

# /etc/lilo.conf - boot loader configuration file
#
boot=/dev/fd0
compact
prompt
read-only
vga=normal
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=bootdisk
append="load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1"
root=/dev/fd0
#
# end of /etc/lilo.conf

At the boot prompt I type as follows
boot: bootdisk init=/bin/sh

then I get the following messages.
Loading bootdisk
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting kernel
..
.. [various kernel messages]
..
VFS: Insert root floppy disk to be loaded into RAM disk and press ENTER
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 1440 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 178k freed

(and then something like)
Kernel Panic: no init found try passing init=/initfile at the boot prompt.

Well, It's like it's not even getting my init=/bin/sh boot argument.
Does anyone know what might be going on?

Regards,
Bill Branch

hi there

first of all u cannot post ur queries in this section

post it in the other sectioin
regarding ur problem

why don't u make a boot disk???

man mkbootdisk

will help u
also does ur kernel require initrd images to boot??

regards

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux - General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

--jeremy

I don't want to use the automated bootdisk program because I'm trying to figure out basically how linux works.

Is it possible some option was not compiled into the kernel? What are the minimal options necessary

Regards,
Bill