Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT lycos.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>

> >> Is there some way to put the BL3 hard drive version onto zip disk?
> >> I want to show friends that linux has a wordprocessor and can even
> >> work with Opera and Firefox (with upgraded glibc).  And maybe games.
> >
> > This is the loop version, so you can resize it and install as many
> > applications as will fit. Maybe you can make your own FS.IMG by mounting
> > the hard drive partition and copying everything over to a new FS.IMG?
> 
> I have not yet learned to resize a loop.

There are two ways, either:

dd if=/dev/zero of=newfs.img bs=1024k count=100 # replace count with desired
                                                # size in MB

mke2fs newfs.img                                # say yes to the prompt
mount -o loop newfs.img /hd
mount -o loop fs.img /fd
cp -a /fd/* /hd
umount /hd
umount /fd

or, if you have the resize2fs program:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k count=100 >>fs.img # replace count with the
                                            # desired size MINUS the
                                            # current size. for
                                            # instance, if you want
                                            # a 50MB image, and it's
                                            # 20MB now, use 30

resize2fs fs.img  # resize2fs may simply say "run e2fsck -f fs.img
                  # first". If that's the case, do what it says,
                  # then run it again.

> How do I copy files to fs.img, with dd?
> 
> dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=fs.img  (all from ramdisk linux)?

OK.

> Then to copy fs.img to zip drive:
> mount /dev/sda4 /zip
> cp fs.img /zip  ?

mount, then mkdir /zip/baslin then cp fs.img /zip/baslin.

> Is your boot disk designed to work only with fs.img?

Yes. It can be changed if you prefer something else.

> Could one be put together that would mount /zip on / with a file 
> system like the one on hard drive instead? But I guess you can 
> always modify the fs.img while it is running if you want to make 
> changes.

That's your choice. Using fs.img makes it much easier to add files
which can be read by DOS.

> Could I try out your boot disk with a scsi zip drive?  I think the 
> only difference is the two parport modules (which won't hurt 
> anything) and ppa.

On the contrary, SCSI is more complicated, because you need low-level
drivers for your specific adapter. You'll probably also need to manually
set up the module. Much more complicated.

> Would it mount fs.img even if ppa did not detect 
> the expected drive?

It first mounts the zip drive, then looks for fs.img in the /baslin
directory. If ppa can't find your zip drive, then it won't boot.

> I am going to first have to learn to make an ext2 filesystem on the 
> zip disk with iw from iomega.

Note that you don't need an ext2 filesystem on the zip disk to use
the bootdisk I made. It can be an msdos filesystem instead, as long
as /baslin/fs.img is on there.

> Can I partition a disk to be half 
> linux and half DOS?  I only have one disk here and want to be able 
> to use it in DOS.

You can use the loopback file as described above. I'm not sure how you
partition a zip disk.

David
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