Can anyone tell me, or point me towards something that will explain what is
the minimum I need to put into an initrd image to satisfy init and complete
the boot process?
I have a kernel that I can load into an old i386, that fails at the point
where it tries to open /dev/console, and fails to execute /sbin/init.
I'm attempting to set root as /dev/NFS, and have successfully mounted root
on a remote bootp server, but none of the nodes in /dev have been set up,
and apparently the kernel can not execute the init scripts that I've put in
the bootp server directory that my old i386 has mounted as root.
NetBSD has a document (http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/)
that explains the server side, and The Linux Documentation Project has a
document (which I just discovered) pointing out that I could copy an
existing /dev directory using -R. (Which I will try next)(onto a root
floppy)
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/buildroot.html
also
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NFS-Root-Client-mini-HOWTO/index.html
That document also discusses a minimum inittab, and I've tried something
similar without success, obviously because of the missing /dev/console node.
I can't really do a 'mknod' on a running kernel, because it screws up the
existing node??
A Linux Journal article by Richard Ferri,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5465
(which I also just discovered) explains what I'm trying to do, and I will
have to study further. .
The obsolete i386 which I am attempting to turn into a Nat/gateway/firewall
(again) is not capable of booting from CDROM.
Thanks for reading. . .
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