Errors in booting a new image built

[Javier Martinez Canillas]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 11:03 PM, SADA SIVA REDDY S
<sadasiva.reddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>    I am trying to setup linux development environment. I did the following
> steps to get my first work environment.
>
> Removed initrd - which should be specific to distributions.
>

You seems to have a wrong idea of what initrd is. initrd is a initial
ram disk file system that is mounted before your root file system and
contains drivers compile as a module that are needed to mount your
real root filesystem.

This is needed if your kernel doesn't have built-in support for the
partition being mounted in /

A good explanation is found here:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-initrd.html

> When I boot this image , I get an error saying can not open root device.(
> https://picasaweb.google.com/sadasiva.reddy/KernelError?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLo_oH4zvPpVA&feat=directlink)
>
> Could any one please guide me how to setup this root file system or any
> thing else that I need to do to be able to boot this kernel that I build.
>

The problem seems to be that your kernel doesn't have support for your
filesystem (or it has support has a kernel module but because you
don't have an initial ramdisk that module can't be loaded)

You have to either compile your kernel with buil-in support for your
filesystem or create an initrd with:

cd /boot/ && update-initramfs -c -k newkernel

An excelent book on Linux kernel configuration and building is Greg's
KH "Linux kernel in a nutshell"

http://www.kroah.com/lkn/

Best regards,

-- 
-----------------------------------------
Javier Martínez Canillas
(+34) 682 39 81 69
PhD Student in High Performance Computing
Computer Architecture and Operating System Department (CAOS)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain