From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 Description of problem: mkbootdsk formats the floppy to 1430kB With recent smp kernels the vmlinuz file is too large, leaving insufficient space for initrd.img For example running mkbootdisk 2.4.18-24.8.0smp produces a vmlinuz file of 1159kB leaving insufficient space for initrd.img which is cut at 264.0kB and can't be gunzipped. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Run mkbootdsk 2.4.18-24.8.0smp (idem with other recent smp kernels) 2. 3. Actual Results: The machine cannot be booted from the disk produced. Expected Results: It should have booted. Additional info: Device full messages are produced when running mkbootdisk The problem does not occur with the single processor kernel which produces a vmlinuz file of 1085kB and leaves 73kB free on the floppy.
Use another device(cdrom) or floppy with bigger capacity, also u can compile your own smaller kernel for this purpose.