Ok... I saw on the Wiki site that Dan Maas had to use a loopback device when
building the floppy on a 2.4.x kernel based system, so I tried to follow
Dan's instructions to use /dev/loop0 instead of a ramdisk, but I kept
getting errors so obviously I wasn't getting something right...  Then I
tried building the floppy again on an older system with kernel 2.2.x (using
the same static kernel as before for the floppy).

After building the new floppy on the 2.2.x system with no errors, I inserted
it again in the IBM x225 and it got to the same place:

RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 889.
VFS: Insert root floppy and press ENTER

When I press ENTER at this point, I get a kernel panic.  I didn't say what
happened when I pressed ENTER in the message below, but the same kernel
panic was happening then as well.

Has anyone else ever seen this problem?  I did find one message on Google
from a suse mailing list, where a guy is asking the same question as me (in
German) but there were no answers to his post...

Any and all suggestions are welcome!  :)

Thanks again,

 - Todd


-----Original Message-----
From: Thompson.Todd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 4:38 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: [tomsrtbt] ramdisk error


Hi,

I've searched the list archives, Google, and the Wiki site, but I can't find
the answer to my particular problem... (that doesn't mean it's not out
there, just that I haven't hit on the right search terms yet...).

I downloaded tomsrtbt-2.0.103 and added my own 2.4.20 static kernel, but
when I boot it I get:

RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 889.
VFS: Insert root floppy and press ENTER

My static kernel is stripped of everything except what's needed to support
the chip set on this particular machine (an IBM x225), and contains the
requirements listed in the FAQ and a few more (ramdisk, minix, loop, floppy
support). It is 656003 Kb in size, and contains no module support
whatsoever.  After my new floppy gave me the above error the first time, I
went back into the kernel config and changed the ramdisk default size to
40Mb instead of 4Mb, then I built the floppy again but still no dice.  I
built the floppy with the following commands (using the instructions in the
FAQ as a guide):

# ./unpack.s tomsrtbt.raw
# cd tomsrtbt-2.0.103.unpacked
# cd 1/
# rm bz2bzImage
# cp ../../mykernelimage bz2bzImage
# chmod 755 bz2bzImage  (don't know if this is necessary)
# cd ../
# ./buildit.s

It builds without errors.  Then I cd into the new directory it created and
type ./install.s.  It formats my blank floppy and installs without errors.

Any ideas?

Many Thanks,

 - Todd

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