[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: sophisticated boot disk



The way to do this, is to build the compressed filesystem as uncompressed
filesystem somewhere in a partition on your system, then write it using dd
and gzip (or bzip) into the floppy after the kernel. LILO must be told to
use the RAMDISK as root of course. There is an extra parameter to be
passed to the kernel via LILO command line to tell it where the compressed
root is on the floppy. This has nothing to do with LILO or root, that
comes later. rtfm lilo, docs for boot parameters, loopback device, mke2fs
on same, docs for ramdisk usage (kernel), dd (watch out for bs, seek,
skip), and gzip / bzip (you want them to write to stdout, not compress in
place, and redirect that where you please).

hope this helps. (I'm the guy who made linux-lp).

TIA, 
	Peter (plp@actcom.co.il)

On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Shahar Livne wrote:

> I had tried to consult some of you during the meeting in Jerusalem, but
> I had no success in solving my problem.
> I want to make a single boot disk, using lilo, and a compressed root
> file system, that will be decompressed to ram disk.
> I managed doing it without lilo, but when the lilo joined the party, the
> problems had started.
> The main problem is that the kernel image must be separated from the
> compressed file system image, and must be pointed by lilo (in order to
> run it).
> The idea you gave me, was to make two partitions in the diskette, and to
> have the kernel in one, and the compressed file system image in the
> other. In this way, I should configure lilo to run the kernel from
> /dev/fd01 , decompress the compressed root file system located at
> /dev/fd02, place it in /dev/ram, and to mount it as a root file system.
> I thought that it is a good idea, and after I have created the two
> partition, I wanted to mkfs them. The problem was the need for /dev/fd01
> and /dev/fd02 devices, which are not standard devices, and therefore
> cannot be created using MAKEDEV. A little research convinced me that it
> is not that easy to create those devices.
> The next solution was to raw-write the zImage, and the rootfs.gz
> (compressed image of rootfs) to the diskette (using dd if=....). The
> writing process went just fine. The rootfs.gz has no problem
> functioning, but I dono how to make lilo run kernel that located in a
> specific address in the diskette. There is this fix-table flag in lilo,
> that suppose to enable running the kernel from a 3D address
> (sector/head/cylinder), but I could not figure out how to use it.
> 
> Do you guys, have any idea that can help me?
> 
> 
> 
>