Re: boot-floppies state
I don't know if this interests you, but in the linux router project the idea was to
have small raw-gz image that had just enough on it to boot, remount the drive, and
then extract the main tgz's. This allowed us to make the disk self contained, as it
is easy to remount the disk and make a new tgz of our current router root. (which
runs out of ram)
The 'boot-strap' initrd image is generic, and can be used for anything. As default it
doesn't have much on it except busybox, bash, and full libc 5. It used full init, by
starting up with a /etc/inittab with a single line. This script remounts the drive,
extracts the .tgz and then does a telinit -q. The 'real' inittab is in the .tgz's and boot
continues as normal. The only thing I needed to change from a default Debian
install was:
si::sysinit:/etc/init.d/boot
to
si::bootwait:/etc/init.d/boot
The 'boot-strap' inittab contains
si::sysinit:/rc.-1
Past that eveything is *seemless*. The system works very well and on mutiple
devices. I've used it on LS-120 floppies besides normal ones, and by default it
tries to mount fd0, hda, hdg, and sda. (This part works but is ugly. It can and
should be refined)
If you like we can work up some standard debian 'boot-strap' system that would be
a nice starter for people making custom boot disks, as well as allow you to provide
debian rescue disk updates in .tgz instead of this horrid raw-gz form.
It would also allow people to more easily make custom install disks, and add
additional commands to the rescue disk. Multiple .tgz can be added on the fly...a
text file, root.map, on the root of the boot device is parsed and the listed archives
extracted in order by the rc.-1 script.
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http://www.psychosis.com/linux-router/ Linux Router Project
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