Debian images on a Risc PC

[Mark Seaborn <mrs35@cam.ac.uk>]

I've been trying to get Jim Pick's Debian/ARM images to work on my
Risc PC.  I've tried both images (the 1999-08-22 and 1999-02-20 ones), 
but both give this on startup:

VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
INIT: Version 2.76 booting
INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
INIT: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "2" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "5" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel

I've tried putting a load of echo commands in /etc/init.d/rc and
/etc/init.d/rcS to see how far it is getting, but nothing extra gets
printed on the screen.

I have tried using the image in a chroot environment and it does not
have this problem (although it does go wrong in other ways).  But if I
get Linux to run a small C program on boot to chroot to the image,
init gives the same respawning errors.

Any ideas what is going wrong?

-- 
         Mark Seaborn
   - mseaborn@bigfoot.com - http://members.xoom.com/mseaborn/ -

       ``Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
            it is time to pause and reflect'' -- Mark Twain