Using an USB disk as root fs.

knopper · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:05 am Post subject: Using an USB disk as root fs.

Hi all,

I'm currently working on a small busybox/uclibc based rescue system which can be found here: http://www.knopper.tk/projects/

Though now I'm looking for a way to boot with a usual floppy and then use an USB disk as root fs. So I made an initrd with the proper modules in it (using 2.6 kernel) and all this gets loaded correctly since in recognizes the usb disk and shows the partition table.

The failure comes when the kernel tries to mount the root fs, it gives this output:

knopper · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 10:55 am Post subject:

anybody?

I've tried to make the initrd both with pivot and without. They both give the same error.

smart · Guru Joined: 19 Nov 2002 Posts: 455

I think its not related to initrd or usb, but proc instead.

jdong · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 41

your kernel line should have root=/dev/sda1, not just sda1

knopper · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 5:05 pm Post subject:

That was a typo, the problem was that there was not device called "sda1" in the initrd dev directory. So I mounted it as loopback device and made it myself.

Nate_S · Guru Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 414

A quick google search turns up that you may need to unmount /proc before you try to piviot_root. Also depending on your init scripts, you may need to change them to point to the real device, rather than /dev/root (if they are)

ref:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=62206
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=64736
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=65099

If that doesn't help, post your init scripts

-Nate

knopper · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 6:20 pm Post subject:

I forgot to mention that besides create the right device block in /dev of the initrd image I also changed "/dev/root" to the right device in the "linuxrc" script. Actually I found thesame websites...

Thanks anyway!