Colin Dean wrote:
> Joshua Murphy wrote:
>
>> On 2/6/07, Joe Ciccone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> Instead of an initrd I'd look into including an initramfs image that
>>> locates the CD, mounts it, does whatever it needs todo to mount the
>>> image, then does a pivot_root into the image's root. I think this is (or
>>> is atleast similar to) what the lfs-livecd does.
>>>
>
> What all needs to be included in the initramfs image? I can't seem to
> find a tutorial on how to make one. I did read the Makefile for the
> initramfs part of LFS 6.2, as well as the init.c file, but I didn't
> really understand a lot of it.
>
>
>> Hmm, actually, look into the bootscripts for DSL, there's a "toram"
>> boot time option that does just that with their system ... but you may
>> learn more from an older version's bootscripts, as a lot of it's
>> harder to follow since they started using unionfs and such.
>>
>
> I'll check that out.
>
>
>> My idea, however: Load a small initramfs (containing mount and either
>> cp or tar+gzip, busybox could handle the job nicely) that mounts a
>> tmpfs based filesystem (make sure to set the max size large enough),
>> then copy a filesystem image into that and mount (or just untar a
>> system into the tmpfs), then pivotroot into the new system ... there's
>> no data persistency, but it should run very fast and relatively clean
>> (assuming no major memory leaks).
>>
>
> My plan thus far is this:
>
> 1. Get LFS's initramfs package.
> 2. Create mini fs with uclibc, busybox
> 3. Modify init.c to mount a ~50 MB tmpfs filesystem
> 4. Untar entire real filesystem image to tmpfs
> 5. pivot_root into the new filesystem
>
> I know I more-or-less just made a list out of that last paragraph, but
> it helps me know more of what I'm doing.
>
> Can I use the same procedure to boot from USB, too? It seems to me that
> the only difference, at least in the way I'm doing it, is the
> bootloader: for the CD, I'll use SYSLINUX/ISOLINUX, and for USB, well, I
> don't know yet--GRUB?
>
> Here's the thing, though: my entire FS is going to be probably under 20
> MB. CLFS out-of-the-box is around 12 MB, and I'm in the process of
> adding PHP, an SNMP daemon, and some other little things to help run
> this (it's a mini-router distro I'm making for my graduation project
> www.cs.westminster.edu/~cdean/capstone ). Would I be able to just mount
> the entire FS as the initramfs and not bother with pivoting?
>
I suppose you _could_ but he entire intramfs is going to be compiled
into the kernel. That would make the kernel huge. I'm pretty sure that
SYSLINUX/ISOLINUX can boot off of USB as well.
_______________________________________________
Clfs-support mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.cross-lfs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/clfs-support
