Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Mon, 5 Apr 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> You also put in 'echo', I think, which will help with compiling.  But 15M
> is sort of small for compiling in and I never could quite understand how
> to make it larger.

>From a post a couple of weeks ago:

3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> Can a user create his/her own fs.img from within BL3
> (or maybe BL2 ramdisk), stipulating a given size?

Sure.  For example, to make a 30mb file:
-------------------------------------------
dd if=/dev/zero of=filename bs=1k count=30k
mke2fs -m0 filename
-------------------------------------------

So, to create a larger fs.img file on your DOS drive to which to install
BL, I think you just replace "30k" in Steven's example with the size (in
MB's) you want the file to be.  I guess it could be 100k, 200k, 500k up
to, I think, a 2GB (2000k) limit.  Is that right Steven?

So, let's say you (Sindi) wanted to do a  BL2 install like this, where you
could put your compiler stuff.  I think you'd want 200 or 300 MB, minimum.
So, on a machine having a hard drive of sufficient size, you'd boot BL2
ramdisk.  Then, you'd mount your DOS partition on that drive - let's say
at a mount point you created called /tmp/DOS.  Then, you'd do
--------------------------------------------------------
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/DOS/BL2.img bs=1k count=300k
-------------------------------------------------------
That would create a 300MB file on your DOS drive called BL2.img (you'd
want to name it accordingly, of course).  Next, you'd want to create an
ext2 filesystem on it, so you'd do mke2fs -m0 /tmp/DOS/BL2.img .  After
that, you'd have a 300MB file on your DOS drive that contained a fresh
ext2 filesystem.  To install BL2, you'd have to mount that file, as a loop
device, at /hd (isn't that where the BL2 install routine expects to find
the media to which it installs?).  To do that, you'd insmod loop, then
you'd mount -o loop /tmp/DOS/BL2.img  /hd .  All that would remain at that
point, so far as I know, would be to run the BL2 install routine - well,
you would have to mount the CD as well, but that step is no different
whether you're using a hard drive partition or a looped file for the
target drive.

Any corrections to offer to this scheme for installing BL2 to a looped
file like BL3 has, anyone (Steven)?

James