Hello group.

I'm running 2.4.26 with Slackware 10.0.

I want to make a kernel that will access the root Linux filesystem on a
hard-drive over the USB bus. I'm doing this for portability.

I used the bare-acpi bootdisk and the root disks to make the Linux system on
the USB drive. There were no problems accessing the USB hard-drive and the
installation went smoothly.

In compiling the kernel to run this system, I've built USB controller and
the USB mass storage components into the kernel (as well as SCSI support
and SCSI disk support). Compilation went fine.

but the kernel cannot find the root device on /dev/sda1.
In the boot messages, I see that the USB 2.0 controller is found, and
registered, and that mass storage is registered. However, there is no
evidence that the controller sees the disk drive.

In summing up: when inserted as modules,it seems the USB components work
properly, and the hard-drive is seen and configured as /dev/sda1, but when
built into the kernel, the USB components do not work properly.

Does anyone have suggestions as to why this is and what I can do about it?

Many thanks.
What's needed?