Arch Linux

onesandzeros

Member

Registered: 2005-09-16

Posts: 41

building/booting a self-compiled kernel without mkinitcpio

Hello all,

I'm used to building a vanilla kernel from kernel.org.  For whatever reason, I always run into trouble with nvidia, madwifi, vmware or some other modules when using patched kernels.

So, using a kernel config which worked on this hardware in gentoo, I do make oldconfig and then follow the instructions at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ker … rom_Source .  Doing mkinitcpio finishes, but with two errors: ERROR: module 'pata[-_]via' not found and ERROR: module 'ata[-_]generic' not found.  They're not found because I build them in.  This kernel will not boot.  Removing those items from mkinitcpio.conf will let the command finish without errors, but that kernel also is not bootable.

I compile a lot of stuff, including ATA (I have Y for just about every VIA chipset and generic ATA option in the kernel) and fs (ext2 and 3), right into the kernel, and as I wrote, this config worked with my last distro, so I'm pretty hard pressed to come up with a reason this doesn't work.  I'm not familiar with mkinitcpio, and I'd prefer not to use it.

When I boot up, it stops with a kernel panic and a message about appending a correct root= option.  Here's by menu.lst:

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img

# (2) Arch Linux
title  2.6.24.2-ARCH
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24.2-ARCH root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/089dea30-0d6c-4113-b1f5-ed51489f29e4 ro
initrd /kernel26-2.6.24.2-ARCH.img

# (3)
title  2.6.24.2 vanilla
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24.2 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/089dea30-0d6c-4113-b1f5-ed51489f29e4 ro

0, 1, and 2 work.  3 does not.  I just tried the UUID stuff today, but that doesn't help.

Thanks for any suggestions!

toofishes

Developer

From: Chicago, IL

Registered: 2006-06-06

Posts: 602

Website

Re: building/booting a self-compiled kernel without mkinitcpio

If you built them in, you don't even need an initrd. You might want to try that approach, as you can just boot the kernel directly and it will have all necessary drivers to be able to boot your system.

onesandzeros

Member

Registered: 2005-09-16

Posts: 41

Re: building/booting a self-compiled kernel without mkinitcpio

toofishes, thanks for your reply.

The last entry in my menu.lst *is* booting the kernel directly, isn't it?  Or not?  Maybe that's where I'm going wrong, but I thought that that entry was identical to my old gentoo menu.lst (I backed up the whole /etc, but I forgot menu.lst, heheh).  Do you see any problems there?

Thanks again

hacosta

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2006-10-22

Posts: 423

Re: building/booting a self-compiled kernel without mkinitcpio

just remove the initrd line

onesandzeros

Member

Registered: 2005-09-16

Posts: 41

Re: building/booting a self-compiled kernel without mkinitcpio

Alright, it looks like /combining/ the UUIDs in fstab with root=0303 in menu.lst has solved the problem.  Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

addition: as the kernel boots up, it hangs for several seconds on this line: ide1 0x170-0x177, 0x376 on irq15.  Also, prior to that, it seems to be looking for hdd, which doesn't exist (it does exist as sdd either, since there's no slave on the secondary ide cable).

Last edited by onesandzeros (2008-02-23 20:58:17)