mkboot and 2.4 precompiled kernels

[Ray Ontko <rayo@ontko.com>]

Hi,

I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to 
use mkboot to create a boot disk after upgrading to a 
precompiled 2.4 kernel in testing.  I know (now) that 
this is an old issue, but I don't see any resolution to 
the problem that would work for typical users.  I'm 
bringing this up here because I think it is a broader
issue than mkboot.

Apparently, a decision has been made to make ext2 support
a loadable module in the kernel, and to use initrd as
part of the bootstrapping process.  This all seems reasonable
to me, but it means that mkboot is now broken. The problem
is that mkboot doesn't know anything about initrd, and 
seems to assume that ext2 support is compiled into the
kernel.  It seems that we should fix one of these so that
people upgrading to woody and trying out the new kernel 
won't be completely frustrated.

Here's the workaround that I used to create a bootable disk 
without modifying mkboot.  This may help to explain the problem a 
little:

# mkdir /mnt/fd0
# mkboot
# mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0
# cd /mnt/fd0
# echo "     initrd=/boot/initrd" >> lilo.conf
# lilo -C lilo.conf
# cd
# umount /mnt/fd0

Is there a simple way to modify mkboot so that it is more friendly
toward the change in kernels?

Ray
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Ontko   rayo@ontko.com   Phone 1.765.935.4283   Fax 1.765.962.9788
Ray Ontko & Co.   Software Consulting Services   http://www.ontko.com/