Dan, I have been able to get the stuff inside squashfs.img to boot as initramfs. You need to have a good amount of ram to pull this off though...
For example, the livced-minimal's initramfs is ~265 MB uncompressed! (all this has to go into ram), so you would need 512 MB or more to boot just a minimal... I am not sure if there is a limit to how large an initramfs can be... I would think not... I hav been able to do this w/ 360 MB initramfs files. Here are the steps to pull this off once you have an iso... On Fedora 7, in Directory w/ livecd-xxxx.iso made by livecd-creator: mkdir -p i j k l # make some mount points mount -o loop livecd-xxxx.iso i -o loop # mount livecd to i cp i/isolinux/vmlinuz . # extract the kernel mount -o loop -t squashfs i/squashfs.img j #mount the squashfs img mount -o loop j/os.img k # mount the os.img cp -a k/* l # copy out he os.img contents umount i j k rm -rf i j k # cleanup cd l # in os.img contents (extracted) ln -sf /sbin/init . # link /sbin/init . (else you can say init=/sbin/init as a kernel param) find . | cpio -o -H newc --quiet | gzip -9 > ../initrd.img # make a cpio archive cd .. rm -rf l # cleanup The above commands get you an initrd.img (initramfs) and a vmlinuz (kernel) derived from a livecd that can be booted w/o need to mount a root from cd / network etc, provided that you have enough ram to support this. Also, if desirable, it should be easy to add a switch to livecd-creator to just build a kernel / (big) initramfs based livecd. Thanks, MFK -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of HAWKER, Dan Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 8:54 AM To: fedora-livecd-list@redhat.com Subject: [Fedora-livecd-list] Kadischi & Alternative Filesystems... Hi All, Apologies if this is completely off track, am scouting for information... Is it possible to use Kadischi with other filesystems apart from isos??? Reason. We have an automated build system that creates custom FC distros for some embedded devices. Presently uses Anaconda, Kickstart and PXE to boot the device and install the distro. Works well enough. There is a requirement to have the entire mini-distro use initramfs which it pulls off of a CF card on the device. As we already have the Anaconda and kickstart pieces in place and working, I wondered if I could use Kadischi to fire the entire build into a cpio archive for placement on the CF card. I was looking at just using yum to pump the rpms in the right place and then finish it all off from there, but Kadischi/Anaconda provides a few extras which would hopefully reduce the *kludginess* of it all :) I noticed in the list archives that this has been raised before, I just wondered if it had gotten any further than that??? TIA Dan -- Dan Hawker Linux System Administrator Astrium http://www.astrium.eads.net -- This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential and/or privileged information or information otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, do not copy this message or any attachments and do not use it for any purpose or disclose its content to any person, but delete this message and any attachments from your system. Astrium disclaims any and all liability if this email transmission was virus corrupted, altered or falsified. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Astrium Limited, Registered in England and Wales No. 2449259 Registered Office: Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG1 2AS, England -- Fedora-livecd-list mailing list Fedora-livecd-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list -- Fedora-livecd-list mailing list Fedora-livecd-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list