Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> sindi keesan wrote:
> > If you ever redo BL3 2-floppy, you could put the
> > modules on disk 1 and the man pages on disk 2
>
> No, that wouldn't work.  manpages are 97kb.
> modules are 338kb.  There simply isn't room
> on the first floppy for such a switch.

You could put many of the modules on the first disk - ppp, slhc, lp, 
parport, parport_pc, so that people can use BL3 in 8MB RAm with one disk. 
Besides moving the manpages to disk 2, you could move X and games.

Computers with pcmcia and ethernet and cdrom drives probably have at least 
12MB RAM so can use the 2-floppy setup.


> > to make disk1 more useful as a single disk linux.
>
> It's not meant to be a single-disk Linux (there are
> plenty of those available already).  The 2-floppy
> BL3 is a temporary Linux whose primary purpose is
> to install itself to HD.


> I only mentioned that the first floppy was self-sufficient
> because we were discussing boot floppies and root floppies.
> I thought you might find it interesting that the first BL3
> floppy is a combined boot/root floppy.

It is a very interesting setup.  I will see what I can do to make BL3 work 
better in 8MB RAM from 2 floppy disks since you are not interested.

> > If you are not too busy I would be very interested to get
> > a general idea of how you made the disk images for BL3.
>
> disk1.img is a boot/root floppy.  lilo, zimage and root
> filesystem (compressed) are written directly to the floppy
> using the method shown in the bootdisk-HOWTO.

root filesystem is a selected set of files that you need in order to run a 
minmal linux and install other packages, plus whatever else fit onto that 
disk (such as manpages and bits of X)?


> disk2.tgz is really just a BL3 package.  /etc/rc (from the
> first floppy) installs it.  You could put a different package
> on the second floppy -- as long as you call it disk2.tgz, it
> will be automatically installed.


disk1.img is an image file and disk2.tgz is a package? Okay, I will try 
putting my own smaller package on disk2 and before installing it I can 
umount /usr/X11R6 and delete enough files to make space for links or maybe 
links2 and some modules in /dev/ram0.  Or is there some way to install 
just part of the existing .tgz package from ram0 linux?

I don't think I should automatically install disk2.tgz in the computer 
with 8MB RAM because it will install to /dev/ram1 which I need to remove 
to get enough RAM to work in.  So I can call it anything I want, or put 
links and modules in two separate packages.

I will try this after we finish deleting enough clutter from the table to 
make space to work in.  Three answering machines already fixed or 
recycled.

> Cheers,
> Steven