Mailing List Archive: Thanks Peter

Dear Peter,

first: thanks for the very prompt reply,

I am not sure I would like to download
400+ meg file on my 56k modem though.
Can that CD be purchased on line?

Maybe some background here is needed:

I am using SuSE Linux 6.4 and dual booting
with windows 95 using LILO. I have found
SuSE to be the easiest to mod so I would
rather work with those files.

There are quite large differences between
Red Hat and SuSE as I am sure you know.

I have about 2 years worth of major
customised changes so my feelings are that
I need to create this CD rather that try
using one based on Red Hat.

I need to gain a complete full understanding
of the install from scratch using
syslinux -> initrd and how/if the CD can be
mounted as, say, a mirror of my /root
partition.

Do you happen to know of any good books that
cover this in high detail?

How for example did people use/setup Linux
before the Red Hat days?

Anyway again thanks for your help,

Regards,
James

James Alan Brown wrote:

> Dear Peter,
>
> first: thanks for the very prompt reply,
>
> I am not sure I would like to download
> 400+ meg file on my 56k modem though.
> Can that CD be purchased on line?
>

No, sorry, I'm not in the CD publishing and fulfillment business; so far
noone seems to have expressed interest in publishing in.

You probably can get away with just downloading the "buildtree" tarball,
though.

> Do you happen to know of any good books that
> cover this in high detail?
>
> How for example did people use/setup Linux
> before the Red Hat days?

This is a huge topic and definitely not appropriate for this mailing list.

There are two ways you can do this, in practice:

a) Compile your kernel with ide-scsi (*no* ide-cdrom) and set /dev/sr0 as
the root device. This will work for SCSI, USB and (via ide-scsi) ATAPI
CD-ROM drives.

b) Use an initrd (in v2.5 or patched v2.4 kernels, initramfs) to prod
around the system looking for a CD-ROM and then mount it. This is a bit
more flexible than (a), especially you don't have to mount the CD as /
(the SuperRescue disk mounts the CD as /usr and uses a ramfs as /), but
requires you to build the requisite initrd.

I recommend (b), but it's definitely more work.

-hpa