pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
 

I've installed Linux on a drive with the intention of moving the drive to another laptop that doesnt have any floppy or CD drive. Initially this failed because the kernel was set for the wrong type of CPU so I put the drive back in the original laptop and recompiled for a compatible CPU, however on booting back up in the new laptop I got the following error

pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2

I've found some things on this raging from recreating a directory (/init-somthing) which is still there to checking the ext3 setting in .config file (but I have no idea what .config file or where to find it) because it has something to do with the ram disk filesystem being wrong

Its probably worth mentioning that the unmodified kernel boots without a problem.

Thanks

So, did you create a compatible initrd image for your self-built kernel? man mkinitrd has all the things you need to know

I gave up in the end and reinstalled (I'd tried removing the RAM disk from the kernel and that only made things worse). Fortunately the next time I recompiled I didnt run into the same problem (no idea why because I didnt do anything differently)