Baslinux mailing list

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

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 cce.zizkov AT volny.cz wrote:

> On 14 Dec 04 at 7:20, keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org wrote:
>
> > Make any desired changes to what is in the ramdisk (add the modules you
> > want, subtract the ones you do not, if you are using a different kernel, and
> > set up the pcmcia stuff;  delete anything inessential to make space)
> >
> > cat /dev/ram0 > /tmp/ramdisk
> >
> > (The entire filesystem is stored as a copy in tmp in /dev/ram1)
> >
> > gzip /tmp/ramdisk   to produce /tmp/ramdisk.gz
>
> Hi Sindi, Steven,
>
> is it REALLY that simple? I am still working with a quite complicated
> routine (included in the BL FAQ) to re-create baslinux.gz for BL2 and
> experience a lot of mysterious problems with it.
>
> Christof

SOmeone else on the list came up with the above method, which works easily 
for me.  Steven's method was too complicated to understand.

You need to do this on a computer with 12MB or more RAM so that you will 
have a second ramdisk with /tmp on it.  With BL3 I did not have a second 
4MB RAMdisk and had to come up with another method.

Make sure you do NOT have the hard drive mounted or cat will try to copy 
all the files on the hard drive as well as what was original in the 
ramdisk.

Instead of to a ramdisk, I copied directly to a floppy disk and had to 
keep the result even smaller than for BL2, so I mounted the /fd, deleted 
all files from it to make space, and then

cat /dev/ram0 |gzip > /fd/bl3.gz

This gave me a 1.13MB file on the second disk, which I could then use 
directly when booting BL3 by the BL2 method (having somewhat altered the 
batch files used to boot with, on the first disk, which contains the 
kernel but not the file system).

For BL2 if you have a second ramdisk try:

cat /dev/ram0 |gzip > /tmp/baslinux.gz

Or you could probably first mount the hard drive if you have BL2 on it

cd /hd/bl2  (or whatever you call the directory with BL2)

rename the old baslinux.gz file, and then cat .... > /hd/bl2/baslinux.gz.
This would work if you do not have a second ramdisk with /tmp on it.


Let us know how it works.  I was very surprised to get it working this 
easily.  My only problems were when I forgot to umount the hard drive 
first (it ran out of space on the floppy drive trying to copy the contents 
of both ram0 and /hd to floppy) and when I changed bl3.gz and did not 
first delete it from the floppy disk (cat added the new stuff to the old 
file and ran out of space).

Sindi