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Re: sophisticated boot disk



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?
> >
> >
> >
> >