so I've compiled my kernel 2.4.18

make dep && make clean && make bzImage && make modules
# yawn
# {have cuppa cuppa}

cp ./arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot//vmlinuz-2.4.18_rbuild4
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.18_rbuild4
make modules_install
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18_rbuild4 2.4.18_rbuild4

# and I get the following error message

All of your loopback devices are in use!

OK I've done this before and it's worked. but now???
I rebooted and same error
from single user mode
I even
ifconfig lo down javascript:smilie('')
(yes I had to reboot after brining lo back up)
but even with it down
Allyour loopback...
RH 7.2 on a P4 1.5G 768M
I am using grub as a loader

Please help

*bump*

just giving myself a list
as I still haven't managed to figure this one out.

anyone?
Beuller?

This isn't going to be a huge amount of help - but I *can* tell you that I don't think it's talking about the loopback interface (lo) - which is networking specific.

Loopback devices are what you use when you want to do something like mount a file as a file system (e.g. you have a CDROM ISO image file, and you want to see whats in it without burning it to CDR first - you can mount the .iso on a loopback file system)

These loopback devices are entirely seperate from the lo device...

Now - the mkinitrd command is a shell script AFAIK - so you can do a 'which mkinitrd' to find out where it is - open it up in your favourite editor, and have a look and see what it's doing with loopbacks...

I'd do the same for you - but my nearest linux install is 200 miles away at home

Bry

...this happens if you boot from a kernel without loopback support for drives (for example. ramdisk support). Try booting from the default kernel and you will most likely be able to finish your kernel rebuild.

cheers,
A08

hi, I was able to hack around this problem by rebuilding my kernel
with the loopback block device defined as a module and then doing an insmod loop.o. (kindof like A08 said).
mkinitrd was calling losetup which thought that all the loopback
devices were in use, looking at the manpage for losetup, it talked
about the insmod business. losetup was always returning error.
I think that there's a little bug in mkinitrd though, the code around
the losetup call thinks that there are 0-8 loopback devices but on
my system (RH7.2) there are 0-15, these numbers should not be
hardcoded, IMHO.