[Jfs-discussion] Problems Booting To JFS Partitions On Red Hat 7.3

[Robert L. C. <coc...@sp...>]

Reading the October 2002 issue of Linux Magazine, which has a fine 
article on Journaling File Systems, prompted me to decide on giving JFS 
a whirl. I formatted a Western Digital WD800 hard drive to JFS. My idea 
was to partition, format the drive as JFS, copy over my entire Red Hat 
7.3 system, and then switch drives.  If I actually got the kernel to 
boot and starting X successfully, I would then upgrade to Red Hat 8.0.

It took me some time to figure out how to reinstall the Grub bootloader, 
and when I did, it began to boot the 2.4.18-17.7.x kernel which I had 
recompiled with jfs-1.0.24 and iptables 1.2.7a support. I also have 
jfsutils-1.0.24 support. The boot sequence started, then an error 
message stating that the kernel couldn't find "init" and more messages 
to the effect that it couldn't find an ext3 filesystem to mount came up. 
Even though I had recompiled my kernel with the latest jfs support built 
in, I can see that it didn't live on a jfs partition at the time I 
created the initial ram disk (initrd). I know that ext3 does need an initrd.

Does JFS need an initial ram disk (initrd)? How do I create one? Or is 
my problem indicative of something else entirely. Is there a specific 
procedure needed to boot Red Hat kernels successfully?

Thanks a lot for any advice that can be given to me.

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA