/sbin/dinstall fails: read-only file system

[Carlos Alberto Carvalho <carlos@fisica.ufpr.br>]

I'm trying to make a custom kernel to install debian from, because the
one in the stable tree doesn't recognize the hardware correctly. It
takes a buslogic SCSI controller for an Adaptec one, and a Zynx ehter
card (a tulip one) for a lance :-(

I compiled another kernel in another machine, with ramdisk support,
and transfered it to the bott floppy. It does boot correctly, and
recognizes the hardware correctly. Then it asks for the root floppy,
loads something and the the installation banner appears, but without
any text! If I type <enter>, a lot of msgs of the type
"/sbin/dinstall: can't create file foo, readonly filesystem"

When the kernel sees the root floppy it in fact says minix filesystem
mounted readonly.

Before putting the new image on the floppy, I used rdev to set the
root device to /dev/fd0, and to set the ramdisk size to 1440, like the
debian one. In fact, this is the output of cmp -l on my image and
debian's:

   502 154 121
   527 220 250
   535 222 252
   660 220 250
   668 222 252
   728  22  34

The first char where they differ is 502 (0x1f6) and the second is 527
(0x20f). If I understand correctly the range where rdev stores
parameters is the same, as I expected.

So, what must I do? The version I'm trying to use is 1.3.57.

Carlos