HD Install :: Booting with loadlin

I'm trying to get DSL to boot from a hard drvie using loadlin.
So far I've downloaded the ISO, and extracted it to a folder on a DOS partition, and i've extracted the boot image too.
I've tried to boot using a batch file, which is essentially:

loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz root=/dev/hda2

It boots, but the kernel panics and says it can't open an inital console - apparently I should have to pass 'init=' to the kernel. I've read through the loadlin documentation and I can't see how you do that with loadlin.

hda2 is a DOS partition, md5sums match and i've had this problem with several versions (0.6 though to 0.71 - which is what I'm using now)

Any ideas? It's probably something obvious I'm missing

Thanks in advance...

You should have the following files in the d:\knoppix directory (or is it d:\dsl?, assuming that hda2 is d:):
loadlin.exe
vmlinuz
miniroot.gz
KNOPPIX

Then use:
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz

I've got all those files in the folder (C:\Knoppix), and I'm using a batch file similar to the one you suggested but without "root=/dev/hda2" or similar then dsl complains about not being able to mount the root file system.
What's confusing me is that I can't see what I'm doing wrong but the kernel still can't open an inital console.

Seems like there is a problem with miniroot.gz. If I have understood the boot process correctly, miniroot is the initial root file system which is used to locate the compressed KNOPPIX file system image. KNOPPIX is then used for the rest of the boot process with autoconfiguring and so on.

In your first try, you try to access /dev/hda2 as a native linux file system which should contain a linux system with init and so on. Since hda2 is a dos file system, it won't work. Your second try, it tries to access miniroot.gz and as this dosn't work, it could be a problem with this file; if you extracted miniroot.gz from a diskette, are you sure that the diskette is ok (no bad sectors)?

I'm actually trying to boot from a dos partition on my hard drive... Is that a problem?

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