initial ramdisk

[Nicolas De Rico]

Hi, I am having a problem with getting root to load...

But first let me explain what I am trying to do.  I am setting up a Beowulf
cluster of identical machines and none of these machines have a hard-drive.
I would like to be able load my ROOT off the server and to store it in a
RAMDISK.  ROOT over NFS would be easier to setup I think, but I am afraid
that when the cluster grows to it's desired size, NFS will add to much
traffic to the network.

Using the PXE booter on a i810e board, I am able to download the kernel and
boot it (It took me a long time to figure out how though).  However I do not
know how to tell the kernel to fetch the root file system and mount it.  My
plan was to use "dd" to append a compressed root file system to my
compressed kernel, and change the ramdisk bit to 1 and tell where the root
fs starts using rdev -- like for a boot disk--, but this hasn't work.  If
this is the way to do it, I must be missing a few steps.

Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Also, I am not sure how I would setup my fstab file for root.  I thought
about this:
/dev/ram0   / ext2 defaults 0 0

Does that look good?

I am sorry that I have to ask these questions, and maybe more later, but
I've looked everywhere I could think of and I have found many bits of useful
info, but I am having a hard time putting them all together.

Thank you,

Nicolas De Rico