Yes, Wolfgang -

I am using U-Boot - but do I need somehow create ramdisk image first (please note that I am building kernel in cygwin Windows XP environment) ?

Firstly I tried to use root file system using NFS server on the same Windows XP machine where I am building via cygwin - by copying pre-made root file system from Arabella CD-ROM to my windows disk drive - this did not work because hard links were not preserved during copying ... bootargs=root /dev/nfs rw nfsroot=192.168.1.100:/home/apovolot/fadsroot -I was getting during the kernel boot: ... Looking up port of RPC 100003/2 on 192.168.1.100 Looking up port of RPC 100005/1 on 192.168.1.100 VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem). Freeing unused kernel memory: 272k init Warning: unable to open an initial console. Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. <0>Rebooting in 180 seconds..

Then I tried to use to NFS mount (read only) onto the Arabella CD-ROM itself (within my Windows XP):

bootargs=root /dev/nfs ro nfsroot=192.168.1.100:/E/fadsroot

This caused kernel booting hanging:

... Looking up port of RPC 100003/2 on 192.168.1.100 Looking up port of RPC 100005/1 on 192.168.1.100 VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem). Freeing unused kernel memory: 272k init *********** hanging **********

Finally I tried:

bootargs=root=/dev/ram rw devfs=nomount init=/bin/sh

bootm 200000 ## Booting image at 16 08:49:38 EDT 2004 PQ2 ADS Portame: Linux 68.1.103 PID hash table entries: 256 (order 8: 2048 bytes) Warning: real time clock seems stuck! Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) Memory: 30432k available (1348k kernel code, 324k data, 272k init, 0k highmem) Calibrating delay loop... 131.07 BogoMIPS Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) NET: Registered protocol family 16 PCI: Probing PCI hardware Generic RTC Driver v1.07 Serial: CPM driver $Revision: 0.01 $ ttyCPM0 at MMIO 0xf0011a00 (irq = 40) is a CPM UART RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 32768K size 1024 blocksize loop: loaded (max 8 devices) eth0: FCC ENET Version 0.3, 08:00:17:40:00:03 NET: Registered protocol family 2 IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 2048 bind 4096) NET: Registered protocol family 1 NET: Registered protocol family 17 Sending DHCP requests ...... timed out! Sending DHCP requests ...... timed out! ...

So what is the real solution ?

Thanks, Alex ************************ In message 20040920.070149.1935.907342@webmail13.lax.untd.com you wrote:

Are there any h/w architecture and board specific details to be taken in account while coding/building the ramdisk ? If so, does the ramdisk explanation in the book covers those details > for PPC (Freescale's PQ2FADS-VR 82xx board with MPC8275)?

All the details you may collect here and there are completely misleading and irrelevant as you wrote you were using U-Boot, which has it's own way of handling ramdisk images, which is independent of the architecture or the kernel version.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk