(Resending because I accidentally sent the original to vger.rutgers.edu.)
The following patch allows (at least, when combined with loop-5B) loopback
root mounting to work again. Without it, the boot process ends with
something along the lines of "kernel panic: I have no root and I want to
scream" (those may not be the exact words), or on ancient 2.3.xx kernels,
an inability to mount root device 00:00.
This bug has kept me from trying Linux 2.4 on my Dell Inspiron 5000e
(which is running a partitionless Red Hat 7 install that I've mutated into
using separate loopback files for /, /usr, etc.). I haven't tried booting
my Inspiron with it yet (I want to back up its hard drive first), but
(with 2.4.2-pre4 and loop-5B) it successfully boots a test-case floppy.
(I can post on the web a .tar.gz with the image, example .config files
for kernel compiles, and usage instructions, probably around 400K total,
if anyone wants me to do that.)
This patch is a merge of a bug fix from 2.2.10-ac11. This fix was merged
into 2.2.11pre2, but it doesn't seem to have been merged into 2.3 or 2.4
at all...
-Barry K. Nathan <[email protected]>
diff -ruN linux-2.4.2-pre4/init/main.c linux-2.4.2-pre4-bkn1/init/main.c
--- linux-2.4.2-pre4/init/main.c Wed Jan 3 20:45:26 2001
+++ linux-2.4.2-pre4-bkn1/init/main.c Mon Feb 19 23:05:01 2001
@@ -149,6 +149,7 @@
const int num;
} root_dev_names[] __initdata = {
{ "nfs", 0x00ff },
+ { "loop", 0x0700 },
{ "hda", 0x0300 },
{ "hdb", 0x0340 },
{ "hdc", 0x1600 },