Mailing List Archive: Looking for info

Looking for info

Jan 25, 2002, 12:14 PM

Post #1 of 5 (1137 views)

Dear All,

This may at first seem a bit odd but I
am hopping to find some info that I feel
would help the Linux community as a whole.

With so many different flavours of Linux
and with each distribution doing their own
thing there doesn't seem to be any easy way
to create a Linux install on a new virgin
PC without committing oneself to a
"Brand Name" (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake
Debian Slackware or other).

Each Brand has its good points as well
as it bad points and it is not until you
start writing C programs for Linux that
you soon realise there exists a total screw
up with RPM's added "dif files" that change
the config of pure tar source files to
suite the Brands likes/dislikes of the
LSB (Linux Standard Base).

What I would like to do is to produce a
bootable (Linux) CD that has a directory
of tools to partition a new hard drive,
format, probe your hardware, install a
kernel,set up a base system with a Bash
Shell and a C++ compiler. Giving the end
user an easy way of building up a custom
"Brand Free System".

I have looked hard on the net at mini-Linux/
Linux from scratch corelinux and endless
others but most seem to be so complex or
require you to have some ones distribution
already installed upon your system.

I am hoping to produce something like the
old MS DOS way where you booted up,
partitioned, formatted and install the
DOS shell (Bash for Linux) on 1 CD.

I can see that syslinux is part of this key
and indeed, is used by many of the big Linux
brand names, do use syslinux to boot up a ram
disk (initrd) at the start of the install.

Can you boot up a Linux CD and mount it as
/root with a directory structure containing
tools and the needed header files?

Can any of you give me info on any good
books (Making a Linux Distribution)/ info
files on how to set about this task?

Any good ideas on how to go about it would
also be welcome.

Regards,
James

James@jabcomp.force9.co.uk

Looking for info [ In reply to ]

hpa at zytor

Jan 25, 2002, 1:20 PM

Post #2 of 5 (1103 views)

Permalink

James Alan Brown wrote:

>
> Can you boot up a Linux CD and mount it as
> /root with a directory structure containing
> tools and the needed header files?
>

Sure. You may want to take a look at the SuperRescue CD,
http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/superrescue/ for how to do it in practice.

-hpa

Looking for info [ In reply to ]

martijn-syslinux at insecure

Jan 25, 2002, 3:05 PM

Post #3 of 5 (1097 views)

Permalink

On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 08:14:42PM +0000, James Alan Brown wrote:
> Dear All,

Hi,

> This may at first seem a bit odd but I
> am hopping to find some info that I feel
> would help the Linux community as a whole.

that's always good :)

> With so many different flavours of Linux
> and with each distribution doing their own
> thing there doesn't seem to be any easy way
> to create a Linux install on a new virgin
> PC without committing oneself to a
> "Brand Name" (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake
> Debian Slackware or other).

I can feel your problems :) No, serious, I have been
working on this too. it's hard.

> Each Brand has its good points as well
> as it bad points and it is not until you
> start writing C programs for Linux that
> you soon realise there exists a total screw
> up with RPM's added "dif files" that change
> the config of pure tar source files to
> suite the Brands likes/dislikes of the
> LSB (Linux Standard Base).

true. Debian does almost the same, and I guess
the rest does too.

> What I would like to do is to produce a
> bootable (Linux) CD that has a directory
> of tools to partition a new hard drive,
> format, probe your hardware, install a
> kernel,set up a base system with a Bash
> Shell and a C++ compiler. Giving the end
> user an easy way of building up a custom
> "Brand Free System".

what do you think you're building then? It's
still a brand but now it's your own one. And
you can't trust the end-user or maybe even the
sysadmin to have enough knowledge to build up
a linux-system from almost-scratch.

> I have looked hard on the net at mini-Linux/
> Linux from scratch corelinux and endless
> others but most seem to be so complex or
> require you to have some ones distribution
> already installed upon your system.

LFS was the best I found. But still it isn't
what you/we are looking for, I guess.

> I am hoping to produce something like the
> old MS DOS way where you booted up,
> partitioned, formatted and install the
> DOS shell (Bash for Linux) on 1 CD.

That's easy. MS-DOS had just a few competitors.
But there were enough shells to choose from,
and enough apps too. I don't think you can
compare DOS with Linux. times changed... :(

> I can see that syslinux is part of this key
> and indeed, is used by many of the big Linux
> brand names, do use syslinux to boot up a ram
> disk (initrd) at the start of the install.
>
> Can you boot up a Linux CD and mount it as
> /root with a directory structure containing
> tools and the needed header files?

I guess so. as long as you don't have to write
anywhere in that structure it should work just
fine.

> Can any of you give me info on any good
> books (Making a Linux Distribution)/ info
> files on how to set about this task?

LFS has the most docs about that I guess,
but yeah, like you said, it's complicated.

> Any good ideas on how to go about it would
> also be welcome.

Like I said, I'm also working on it :) I guess
I didn't help you much, but don't feel discouraged.
what you are trying to do is good, as long as it
doesn't give us *another* distro, for there are so
many already </understatement>.

grtz, Tijn

--
11:54PM up 10:40, 4 users, load averages: 0.16, 0.16, 0.16

Re:Looking for info [ In reply to ]

James at jabcomp

Jan 25, 2002, 4:13 PM

Post #4 of 5 (1100 views)

Permalink

>Well, you should definitely look at Slackware, which was one of >the original
>distro's... I'd suggest either getting another drive, and >setting up Red
>Hat, Mandrake, Debian, and Slackware at a minimum, and get used >to the
>different philosophy behind each. Bonus points for different >hardware (like
>Sparc or Alpha) and YDL or something on those platforms...

Got Slackware 7 worked my way through
Red Hat 6.1, 6.2 Got SuSE 7.1 SuSE 6.4, SuSE 6.3, SuSE 6.2
(better still using SuSE 6.4 with my many mods)
also have Used/Got Mandrake 8 and debian 2.2.r0

Rather stick with SuSE 6.4 thanks...

Thanks Peter for your comments...
will work on that part.

No way do I want to create yet another new
distro! (I would love to see just one standard)

Just would like to save myself 3 hours of install
on new systems and weeks of cleaning out all the
unwanted junk to get my ideal system as I want it.

Regards,
James

Re:Looking for info [ In reply to ]

hpa at zytor

Jan 25, 2002, 4:38 PM

Post #5 of 5 (1099 views)

Permalink

James Alan Brown wrote:

>
> Just would like to save myself 3 hours of install
> on new systems and weeks of cleaning out all the
> unwanted junk to get my ideal system as I want it.
>

You're probably better off picking an existing distribution and add your
own package lists and customizations.

-hpa