(Resending because I accidentally sent the original to vger.rutgers.edu.) The following patch allows (at least, when combined with loop-5B) loopback root mounting to work again. Without it, the boot process ends with something along the lines of "kernel panic: I have no root and I want to scream" (those may not be the exact words), or on ancient 2.3.xx kernels, an inability to mount root device 00:00. This bug has kept me from trying Linux 2.4 on my Dell Inspiron 5000e (which is running a partitionless Red Hat 7 install that I've mutated into using separate loopback files for /, /usr, etc.). I haven't tried booting my Inspiron with it yet (I want to back up its hard drive first), but (with 2.4.2-pre4 and loop-5B) it successfully boots a test-case floppy. (I can post on the web a .tar.gz with the image, example .config files for kernel compiles, and usage instructions, probably around 400K total, if anyone wants me to do that.) This patch is a merge of a bug fix from 2.2.10-ac11. This fix was merged into 2.2.11pre2, but it doesn't seem to have been merged into 2.3 or 2.4 at all... -Barry K. Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> diff -ruN linux-2.4.2-pre4/init/main.c linux-2.4.2-pre4-bkn1/init/main.c --- linux-2.4.2-pre4/init/main.c Wed Jan 3 20:45:26 2001 +++ linux-2.4.2-pre4-bkn1/init/main.c Mon Feb 19 23:05:01 2001 @@ -149,6 +149,7 @@ const int num; } root_dev_names[] __initdata = { { "nfs", 0x00ff }, + { "loop", 0x0700 }, { "hda", 0x0300 }, { "hdb", 0x0340 }, { "hdc", 0x1600 }, - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/