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Re: sophisticated boot disk
I guess I did get the idea, and I did answer it in detail. There will be
more detail in the mini-howto I am writing now about linux-lp. Give me a
week or so...
BTW, disks preceisely, exaclty, like what you want have been the original
installation disks of Slackware distributions since forever. They contain
LILO, a compressed kernel, and a compressed ramdisk. Feel free to take
apart one of them and see what gives (HINT: you are looking for LILO
config data - with a hex editor such as jed, and for GZIP magic headers,
perhaps with diff or grep).
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Shahar Livne wrote:
> Dear Peter,
> Unfortunately, you did not understand my question.
> I have managed to do all the the stuff you described without using lilo.
> (I used rdev option in order to tell the kernel if and where to look for
> the compressed file system). I have rtfmed lilo and his associated
> friends, but the problem was in a higher level - Mutual existing of
> lilo, kernel and compressed fs on the same diskette.
> (That's the reason for calling this question - "sophisticated boot disk"
> ;-)
>
> thnx anyway,
>
> Shahar.
>
> P.S.
> Gilad - your implementation, might help me.
> I didn't think about using dos ;-)
> (You know, people tend to repress problematic operating systems ...)
>
>
> Peter L. Peres wrote:
>
> > 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?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
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