can't get init to work

Craig craig5 at pobox.com
Thu Oct 25 04:15:47 UTC 2007


Hi.

I am using busybox 1.7.2 on a CentOS 4.4 kernel (2.6.9). Everything 
seemed to compile fine. I am able to run the shell 
(/usr/local/src/busybox-1.7.2/busybox ash) and able to run some simple 
commands.

But, when I try to build an initrd from it, things don't seem to work. I 
have tried PXE booting:

         kernel os/test/vmlinuz
         append root=/dev/ram0 initrd=os/test/initrd.img.gz init=/linuxrc

Via grub:
title Test init
         root (hd0,0)
         kernel /test-vmlinuz ro root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc
         initrd /test-initrd.img.gz

In that initrd, I also have the "default CD /sbin/init" as 
/sbin/init-orig. (I guess it's basically the anaconda binary.) If I 
simply change init ("init=/sbin/init-orig"), anaconda starts up and 
things look to be fine.

I must be doing something silly, but I can't figure out what it is. I 
have tried changing "/linuxrc" to various ash scripts and/or a symlink 
to /sbin/busybox.

The error I get is:
...
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 164K freed
Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option to 
kernel.

Not sure what other information you need.

TIA!

Craig.

P.S. All I am trying to do is build a VERY simple network boot image so 
that I can look at some simple data from the hardware (like MAC addr).



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