Hi, I've build the kernel but when i reboot it, it gives me message: kernel panic: no init found Try passing init= option to kernel. Now, I've initrd-2.4.18-14.img in boot directory. I have build kernel with name vmlinux-2.4-18-csc1. Do i need to make initrd image for this kernel? If yes, then how can i do that? I've following line also in grub cofig. file: initrd /initrd-2.4-18-14.img I don't know what to do and where i might have done wrong. Another thing i want to know how can we check that which boot loader i'm running? I am using red hat linux 8.0. If i have lilo running on then how could i change to GRUB? Any help would be greatly appreciate. Thanks.

you don't need an initrd if you have your ide hard disk (or scsi) drivers compiled in the kernel. Initrd is an initial ram disk which the kernel mounts as root at bootup, then the disk modules are loaded, and then the real disk partition is mounted as root. ie, its not needed when the disk drivers are compiled _in_ the kernel. the vmlinux file is not a kernel image, you need to copy the file arch/i386/boot/bzImage to /boot/ and edit the bootloader config file to boot it. In redhat 8, the default boot loader is grub (unless you change it). the grub config file is /boot/grub/menu.lst. You can edit it to your taste (its quite well commented). For the init error you're getting, make sure you are mounting the correct partition as root (in the bootloader config file). The error means that the kernel cannot find the "init" program which is located in /sbin (the sbin folder in the root partition). Init is responsible for booting the rest of the system by reading the file /etc/inittab and executing the scripts found in /etc/rc.d. Its quite simple really.