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. -- don't visit this page. it's bad for you. take my expert word for it. http://www.salon.com/people/col/pagl/2001/03/21/spring/index1.html [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sourceforge.net/projects/newbiedoc -- we need your brain! http://www.dontUthink.com/ -- your brain needs us!