create bootable floppy image with only kernel and initrd
 

I'd like to make a bootable floppy image (2.88MB) with a kernel and an initrd. This image will never exist on a floppy disk and hopefully it won't need to mount itself. In other words, I'd like to pretend like this image is /dev/hda1 and install nothing but the kernel, initrd, and lilo (or whatever will make it boot the kernel.) The only thing the initrd will do is load the sdhci module and kexec a partition on an SD card. Unfortunately the computer won't boot the SD card itself; only a floppy image on a FAT16 partition on an SD card (Toshiba laptop.) Were sdhci available as a compiled-in kernel option I'd just replace the kernel in syslinux. Maybe syslinux can load an initrd for its own kernel? That would definitely save some time.

I plan to use mkinitrd and edit the linuxrc so that instead of it pivoting to the root partition it mounts the SD partition and does the kexec. Really the only holdup is not being able to figure out how to boot a kernel+initrd on a floppy.

So far I've tried this:

• Created an empty image file and looped it
• Tried to partition the image (problem rereading table after write)
• Tried installing lilo on the image (bad device type)

Thanks.
Kevin Barry

This isn't an issue anymore. I didn't solve it; the requirement went away. Thanks.
Kevin Barry