Ok, after many days of trying, google-ing, trying again I'm giving up and hope somebody here can help me:

I've got a machine running Xen/FC5 working fine. Now I would like to convert it to a "diskless" machine, having it's root filesystem on an ATA over Ethernet (AoE) device. I've been trying a step by step approach, so for the moment it just starts with Grub (this should become PXE based) and then loads a modified initrd.

All I've added to the initrd (different from the default Xen/FC5 initrd is):
- busybox; giving me an ifconfig to get the network device up
- aoe.ko
- tulip.ko

I changed the init nash script to load the modules, create the /dev/etherd/e0.0 node etc.

What I see is that the network interface comes up: OK
The AoE driver is loaded and finds the AoE device: OK
I can mount the AoE filesystem and perform an 'ls' on it: OK

But when it comes to the switchroot command the machine immediately (as far as I can see without an error) reboots.

I've tried scenarios with and without LVM on the AoE drive. In both cases the filesystems are found and mountable; I've tried minor modifications based on NFS root and other diskless root documents but nothing works.

To be honest, my knowledge of the linux boot process is still limited and exactly the "magic" of switching the root from the initrd to the physical disk is one of the things I still don't grasp, but at this moment I really feel stupid on one side and on the other get puzzled with the apparantly many ways it is done by the different distros and projects.

Simple question though: does anybody have a hint what may be going on here?

Any help is appreciated !!!

Regards,

Paul Tap