On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 03:40:24PM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote: > > IIRC Dale Scheetz used to have one for bo (sorry if I'm wrong, Dale :) > > > Well, not exactly. What I do is an imbedded file system that can be > installed on a DOS/Windows/'95 file system as simple files and booted with > a special patched kernel using the loop device. BTW, DiD is available in > hamm as well as bo versions for anyone interested ;-) The way I see to do this.... You have boot files on the CD, like you would on a rescue floppy, in fact you COULD have a rescue floppy, but that rescue floppy would have a much simpler install function... To install, just figure out where user wants this stuff to be and create a Debian dir for them on the filesystem they choose which will have an initrd and stuff, and then build them a ext2 image with extra space for /, with /etc and /var and an empty /usr. The initrd's job? Mount the filesystem (probably msdos or vfat) and set up the loopback fs so it'll be mounted as root. The init stuff for the loopback root of course mounts your cdrom someplace and makes /usr be what's on the live filesystem.. You now have canned Debian in about 30-50 megs HD space. The same technique could be used for a no-partitioning-needed installation (someone posted a message about that, forget who) Take that and add a way for the initrd to find the device containing the loopback / image and you'll have the basis for Debian on things like Zip and Superdisks that can be downloaded and unpacked to the disk and it'll set itself up even as bootable, etc. Why do that? My rescue zip disk project, which I WILL get back to at some point. I had gotten as far as an idea of how to do the part you've apparently done already---the / loopback deal---and was trying to figure out a good way to find the image from the initrd.. Maybe some magic filenames or something, I have no idea how best to do it actually.
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