In article <3caa2818.0306251726.4ea2c0c4@posting.google.com>,
Joe <joe.cooley@lycos.com> wrote:
It doesn't. That mechanism is solely for a floppy root.
Nope. It doesn't work.
The tool that you need is the Initial ramdisk, which is designed precisely
for this purpose. The initial ramdisk is a filesystem (which can be compressed)
that is loaded along with the kernel by the bootloader. The kernel will mount
the initrd after booting, and will execute a program/script named linuxrc if
it exists in the root directory of the initrd.
If you want to see all of this in action, simply boot any existing distribution
CDROM. Slackware, RedHat, gentoo, and especially KNOPPIX all use this technique
to get going.
Well my confusion is why you are trying to craft this by hand? If the kernel
recognizes and maps the USB CDROM as /dev/sr0, then any distribution worth
its salt will pick it up upon boot.
The final element that you failed to inform us: what exactly are you trying
to install. That info would be a big help.
BAJ
