Arch Linux

goldfish777

Member

Registered: 2012-11-04

Posts: 32

Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk" -- self compiled kernel

Hello and thanks in advance for any assistance.

Im taking an operating systems class and, for it, need to modify the linux kernel. In the assignments we are using fedora but, as a long time arch user I'm doing it with arch.
I did do it in fedora without any issues but its just SOOOO much faster in arch. Anyways, so I checked out this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke … ual_Method
I Followed the instructions and ended up with the kernel, system map and initramfs in the /boot directory like it says. I ran "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg" and my vm gets stuck after printing the
line "Loading initial ramdisk"

I editted the grub entry and added an echo statement on the next line after the command that loads the initial ramdisk and it is indeed printing it but its not booting for some reason.

I've been googling and such but cant really find anything. I'm not really sure how to proceed.

Thanks

EDIT: Oh and just so you know, the change im making is trivial. We are just changing the version info basically to "get our feet wet" before proceeding to more complez projects

Last edited by goldfish777 (2014-02-18 03:14:54)

init0

Member

Registered: 2011-04-12

Posts: 37

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk" -- self compiled kernel

So have you tried whether syslinux can boot your kernel?

Grub2 always caused a BIG delay on my VMware Linux VMs (but eventually also booted).

goldfish777

Member

Registered: 2012-11-04

Posts: 32

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk" -- self compiled kernel

Sorry for not responding. I've been busy and haven't had any time to post a response. I will give that a shot and get back to you ASAP.

goldfish777

Member

Registered: 2012-11-04

Posts: 32

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk" -- self compiled kernel

Actually I need to get it to work with grub. in the projects we are submitting the grub.cfg file along with the patch to the kernel. Does anyone have experience with custom compiling the kernel with grub as the bootloader?

goldfish777

Member

Registered: 2012-11-04

Posts: 32

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk" -- self compiled kernel

So my current process has been:

first i modified MakeFile and put the version stuff that the project is asking for.

then I ran the following commands:

$ make mrproper
$ make menuconfig
$ make -j8
$ make modules_install
$ mkinitcpio -k FullKernelName -g /boot/initramfs-YourKernelName.img
$ cp System.map /boot/System.map-YourKernelName
$ grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

then after I rebooted I selected my new kernel and it got stuck after printing "Loading Initial Ramdisk....."