Linux root partition mounts read-write

[David Lerner]

I have encountered a problem with booting Linux (2.4.3) with GRUB with
an initrd
file that is generated by the SuSE-7.1 mk_initrd script. The kernel
mounts
the root partition rw even though there is a ro parameter on the command
line
and the root flag is set to 1. This is a problem as it prevents e2fsck
from
running at boot time.

The SuSE script creates a init disk with 5000 blocks. This is much
larger than is really needed. The boot problem does not happen if the
script is changed to
reduce this size to 4096 blocks. There is no problem if there is no
initrd at
all, and no problem if GRUB chainloads a LILO boot sector that
references
the same initrd file.

I am using GRUB 0.5.96.1 on a Intel Pentium II machine with 196MB or
ram.

David Lerner
<address@hidden>