making bootable CD from running debian setup
Point me to the faq -- i don't know where to look for it or what
it might be named...
Objective: to create a bootable CD for a Debian network
hub-like system that'll have NO hard drive (and probably no
keyboard or monitor, either). booting from rad-only media
assures simplicity of recovery in case anything gets borked
(black hats, misfortune, unintentional changes).
I'm setting up a debian/potato install to fit on a CD rom that
i'd like to have as bootable -- in that i'd like to use the CD
rom as the SOLE non-network device on a no-disk server.
I.e. old pentium box with a cd rom and floppy drive (for variable
settings) but no hard drive, eventually.
Of course, to get there, i'm installing and testing and tweaking
on a hard drive. But the end result should be a bootable CD that
doesn't need a hard drive at all.
I can partition my current drive with a 600mb partition which
would fit on a CD, and get it working -- on hard disk, anyway --
and create an ISO image (mkisofs i presume?) But there's so
much writing to /var and /tmp by ordinary procedures that i
wonder if a read-only boot can work at all! Is there some way to
make a ram disk (as i think the debian rescue/install CD does)
during boot-up from such a CD rom?
and then, once i have an ISO image, can i ftp that to a win or
mac box to burn the cd? i haven't got a burner for my debian
monster yet... :(
so, regarding all these points:
- what's it take to create a cd image
- that's bootable
- from a working hard-drive based system
- that'll peel off into ramdisk for /var & /tmp writing
- and that will be able to read (settings) from /dev/fd0
- perhaps logging remotely, based on those settings
i ask:
how? <-- such a little question, needing such a big answer :)
pointers hither and yon are requested.
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