(Sparc64) 2.6.20 seems to ignore initramfs

From: Andrew Walrond
Date: Fri Feb 23 2007 - 06:08:33 EST


On a Sun T1000 I am trying to boot 2.6.20 using initramfs. (I use the same
procedure successfully on x86_64 and itanium2 servers).

The relevent silo section looks like this:

image=/boot/2.6.20.image
label=2.6.20
initrd=/boot/2.6.20.initramfs
partition=2
read-only

The kernel loads and boots and I see

Allocated 8 Megs of memory at 0x40000000 for kernel
Loaded kernel version 2.6.20
Loading initial ramdisk (127932430 bytes at 0x1000000 phys, 0x40C00000
virt)...
/
Remapping the kernel... done.
Booting Linux...
PROMLIB: Sun IEEE Boot Prom 'OBP 4.23.0 2006/06/02 16:14'
PROMLIB: Root node compatible: sun4v
Linux version 2.6.20 (nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) (gcc version 4.1.1) #1 SMP Thu Feb
22 16:25:18 GMT 2007
ARCH: SUN4V
Ethernet address: 00:14:4f:2a:90:92
PROM: Built device tree with 65903 bytes of memory.
Built 1 zonelists. Total pages: 242541
Kernel command line: ro

[snip]

checking if image is initramfs... it is
Freeing initrd memory: 124934k freed

[snip]

VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
<0>Press Stop-A (L1-A) to return to the boot prom


So it knows about the initramfs, but then tries to mount a root filesystem
instead...

I haven't tried this (initramfs) with earlier kernels, so I don't know
whether this is a regression. Any clues about how to solve this would be
greatly appreciated.

Andrew Walrond
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/