max size of initrd image files

max size of initrd image files

[Susumu Takuwa]

Hi, I have problem about booting Linux by using initrd which
I made originally.I have made original two initrd images,
that have *same* contents, but they have different size. ie,

first, creating image file.
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/ramdisk1 bs=1024k count=48
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/ramdisk2 bs=1024k count=64

second, copying files of initrd.img which is contained some
distro.
$ gzip -dc /boot/initrd.img > /tmp/initrd
$ losetup /dev/loop1 initrd
$ losetup /dev/loop0 ramdisk(1|2)
$ mount /dev/loop0 /loop0
$ mount /dev/loop1 /loop1
$ cp -a /loop1/* /loop0/

$ losetup -d ...
$ umount ...

$ gzip -c9 ramdisk(1|2) > /boot/ramdisk(1|2).img

third, booting kernel with initrd image under setting kernel
parameter ``ramdisk=131072''. My Linux Box have 384MB RAM
and 2.2.17 kernel.

Well, when I used ramdisk1.img, I could boot kernel with no
problem. But when I used ramdsisk2.img , I could not boot
kernel with following error message.

	RAMDISK: could not determine device size

Is the 64MB initrd image compressed by gzip too big? Can I
solve the problem?


	Susumu Takuwa