[yocto] kernel panic - not syncing: No init found

[Francis Meyvis]

Hello,

I probably miss something trivial.
I cloned the git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky.git
I build on a 64 bit machine a qemux86-64
(. ./oe-init-build-env qemux86-64 and changing the conf/local.conf)
I build the core-image-sato & core-image-minimal.
Then I try to run with
runqemu qemux86-64 core-image-sato ext3

But both sato and minimal give me this message:
Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.

As runqemu showed me the full command line I tried to add the --append
command line option
init=/sbin/init and /sbin/init.sysvinit
But that did not help (there's a message saying Failed to execute
/sbin/init. Attempting defaults...)
I verified by mounting these ext3 images on a loop device that there's
really a /sbin/init present.

Can somebody tell what I'm doing wrong?

BTW is there any way to not have to run qemu with root permissions?
I ran the android emulator and it does not require me to be root.
Should I configure something on my Ubuntu machine to get qemu to function?

Thanks,
francis